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Carlos Castaneda. The Power Of Silence



     Carlos Castaneda — "The Power Of Silence"

     Foreword

     My books are a true account of a teaching method that don Juan Matus, a
Mexican Indian  sorcerer, used in order to help me understand the sorcerers'
world. In this sense, my books  are the account of an on-going process which
becomes more clear to me as time goes by.
     It takes  years of training to teach us to deal intelligently  with the
world of everyday life. Our schooling - whether In plain reasoning or formal
topics  - is rigorous, because the knowledge we are trying to impart is very
complex. The same criteria apply  to  the sorcerers' world: their schooling,
which relies on oral instruction and the manipulation of awareness, although
different from ours, is just as rigorous, because  their knowledge is as, or
perhaps more, complex

     Introduction

     At  various times  don Juan  attempted to  name  his  knowledge  for my
benefit. He felt that the  most appropriate name was nagualism, but that the
term was too obscure. Calling  it simply "knowledge" made it  too vague, and
to call  it  "witchcraft"  was  debasing. "The mastery  of  intent"  was too
abstract,  and  "the search for  total freedom" too long  and  metaphorical.
Finally, because he was unable to find a more appropriate name, he called it
"sorcery," although he admitted it was not really accurate.
     Over the years, he had  given me different definitions of  sorcery, but
he  had always maintained  that definitions change  as  knowledge increases.
Toward  the  end  of  my  apprenticeship,  I  felt I was in  a  position  to
appreciate a clearer definition, so I asked him once more.
     "From  where  the  average  man stands,"  don  Juan said,  "sorcery  is
nonsense or an  ominous  mystery  beyond his reach. And he  is  right  - not
because  this is an absolute  fact,  but  because  the average man lacks the
energy to deal with sorcery."
     He stopped for  a moment before he continued.  "Human  beings  are born
with  a finite amount  of  energy,"  don  Juan  said,  "an  energy  that  is
systematically deployed, beginning at the moment of  birth, in order that it
may be used most advantageously by the modality of the time."
     "What do you mean by the modality of the time?" I asked.
     "The modality of the  time is the precise bundle of energy fields being
perceived," he answered. "I believe man's perception has changed through the
ages.  The actual  time decides  the  mode; the  time decides  which precise
bundle of energy fields, out of an incalculable number, are to be  used. And
handling  the  modality of  the time  - those few, selected energy fields  -
takes  all our available energy, leaving us nothing  that would help us  use
any of the other energy fields."
     He  urged  me with  a  subtle movement of his eyebrows to  consider all
this.
     "This  is what I mean when I say that  the average man lacks the energy
needed to deal with sorcery," he went  on.  "If he  uses only  the energy he
has, he can't perceive the worlds  sorcerers do. To perceive them, sorcerers
need to use  a cluster of energy fields not  ordinarily  used. Naturally, if
the average  man  is  to  perceive  those  worlds and understand  sorcerers'
perception he must use the same cluster they have used. And this is just not
possible, because all his energy is already deployed."
     He paused as if searching for the appropriate words to make his point.
     "Think of it  this  way," he proceeded.  "It isn't that as time goes by
you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And
this  energy will enable you to  handle  some of the energy fields which are
inaccessible  to you now. And  that is  sorcery: the  ability  to use energy
fields  that  are not  employed  in perceiving  the ordinary world we  know.
Sorcery  is  a  state  of awareness.  Sorcery  is  the ability  to  perceive
something which ordinary perception cannot.
     "Everything I've  put you  through,"  don  Juan went  on,  "each of the
things I've shown you was only a device to convince you that there's more to
us than meets the eye.
     We  don't  need  anyone  to teach us  sorcery, because there  is really
nothing to learn. What we need is  a teacher  to  convince us that there  is
incalculable power at our fingertips.  What a strange paradox! Every warrior
on the path of  knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning
sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power
hidden in his being, and that he can reach it."
     "Is that what you're doing, don Juan - convincing me?"
     "Exactly.  I'm trying to convince you that  you can reach that power. I
went through the same thing. And I was as hard to convince as you are."
     "Once we have reached it, what exactly do we do with it, don Juan?"
     "Nothing. Once we  have reached it, it will,  by  itself,  make use  of
energy fields which  are available  to us but inaccessible. And  that, as  I
have  said, is  sorcery.  We begin  then  to  see  -  that is, to perceive -
something else; not  as imagination,  but as real and concrete. And  then we
begin to know without having to use words. And what any of us does with that
increased  perception,  with  that silent  knowledge,  depends  on  our  own
temperament."
     On another occasion, he  gave  me another kind  of explanation. We were
discussing an unrelated topic when he abruptly changed the subject and began
to tell me a joke. He laughed and,  very gently, patted  my back between the
shoulder blades, as if  he were  shy and  it was too forward of him to touch
me. He chuckled at my nervous reaction.
     "You're skittish," he said teasingly, and  slapped my back with greater
force.
     My ears buzzed.  For an instant I lost my breath. It felt us  though he
had hurt my  lungs. Every breath brought  me great discomfort.  Yet, after I
had coughed and choked a few  times,  my nasal  passages opened and I  found
myself
     taking deep, soothing breaths.  I had such a feeling of well-being that
I was not even annoyed at him for his blow, which had  been  hard as well as
unexpected.
     Then  don  Juan  began  a  most  remarkable  explanation.  Clearly  and
concisely, he gave me a different and more precise definition of sorcery.
     I had entered into a wondrous state of awareness! I had such clarity of
mind  that  I was able to comprehend  and assimilate everything don Juan was
saying. He said that in the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable
force  which  sorcerers  call  intent, and that  absolutely everything  that
exists in the  entire  cosmos  is attached to intent  by a connecting  link.
Sorcerers, or warriors,  as he called them,  were concerned with discussing,
understanding,  and  employing that connecting  link. They  were  especially
concerned with  cleaning  it of the numbing  effects  brought about  by  the
ordinary concerns of their everyday lives.  Sorcery at  this  level could be
defined as  the procedure  of cleaning one's connecting link  to intent. Don
Juan  stressed that this  "cleaning procedure" was  extremely  difficult  to
understand,  or to  learn to  perform. Sorcerers, therefore,  divided  their
instruction into two categories. One was  instruction  for the everyday-life
state  of  awareness,  in which  the  cleaning process  was presented  in  a
disguised fashion. The  other was instruction for  the states of  heightened
awareness, such as the one I was presently  experiencing, in which sorcerers
obtained   knowledge   directly  from   intent,  without   the   distracting
intervention of spoken language.
     Don Juan explained that by using heightened awareness over thousands of
years  of  painful struggle, sorcerers  had  gained  specific  insights into
intent; and that  they had passed these  nuggets of direct knowledge on from
generation to generation to the present. He said that the task of sorcery is
to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable
by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
     Then he explained the  role of the guide in the lives of  sorcerers. He
said that a guide is called "the nagual," and that  the nagual is a man or a
woman with  extraordinary energy,  a teacher who  has  sobriety,  endurance,
stability; someone seers  see as a luminous sphere having four compartments,
as  if four luminous balls  have  been compressed together. Because of their
extraordinary  energy, naguals are  intermediaries. Their energy allows them
to channel peace, harmony, laughter, and knowledge directly from the source,
from intent, and transmit them to their companions. Naguals  are responsible
for supplying what sorcerers call  "the  minimal chance":  the awareness  of
one's connection with intent.
     I told him that my mind was grasping everything he was telling me, that
the only  part of his explanation still unclear  to me was  why two  sets of
teachings were needed. I could understand everything he was saying about his
world easily,  and yet he had described the process of understanding as very
difficult.
     "You will need a lifetime to remember the  insights you've  had today,"
he said, "because most of them were silent knowledge. A few moments from now
you will  have forgotten them.  That's one of the unfathomable mysteries  of
awareness."
     Don Juan then made me shift  levels of consciousness by  striking me on
my left side, at the edge of my ribcage.
     Instantly  I  lost  my  extraordinary clarity of  mind  and  could  not
remember having ever had it. ...
     Don  Juan himself set me  the task of  writing  about the  premises  of
sorcery. Once, very casually in the early stages
     of my apprenticeship, he suggested that I write a book in order to make
use of the notes  I had always taken. I had accumulated  reams of  notes and
never  considered what  to do  with them. I argued that  the  suggestion was
absurd because I was not a writer.
     "Of course, you're  not a writer," he said,  "so  you will have to  use
sorcery.  First, you must visualize your experiences as if you were reliving
them, and then  you must see the  text in  your  dreaming. For you,  writing
should not be a literary exercise, but rather an exercise in sorcery."
     I have written in that manner about the premises of sorcery just as don
Juan explained them to me, within the context of his teaching.
     In his  teaching  scheme,  which was developed by sorcerers  of ancient
times, there  were two categories of instruction. One was  called "teachings
for the right  side," carried out  in  the ordinary  state of awareness. The
other was called "teachings for the left side,"  put into practice solely in
states of heightened awareness.
     These  two  categories  allowed  teachers  to school  their apprentices
toward  three  areas of  expertise:  the  mastery  of  awareness, the art of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.
     These  three  areas  of  expertise  are  the  three  riddles  sorcerers
encounter in their search for knowledge.
     The  mastery of awareness is the  riddle  of  the  mind; the perplexity
sorcerers experience when they recognize the astounding mystery and scope of
awareness and perception.
     The  art of  stalking  is  the  riddle  of the  heart;  the  puzzlement
sorcerers feel  upon becoming  aware  of  two things: first  that  the world
appears  to  us  to  be  unalterably  objective  and  factual,  because   of
peculiarities  of  our awareness  and perception; second,  that if different
peculiarities of perception come into play,  the very things about the world
that seem so unalterably objective and factual change. The mastery of intent
is  the riddle of the spirit,  or  the paradox of the abstract -  sorcerers'
thoughts and actions projected beyond our human condition.
     Don Juan's instruction on the art of stalking and the mastery of intent
depended  upon his instruction on  the mastery of  awareness, which was  the
cornerstone of his teachings,  and  which  consist  of the  following  basic
premises:
     1.  The  universe  is  an  infinite  agglomeration  of  energy  fields,
resembling threads of light.
     2.  These energy fields, called the  Eagle's emanations, radiate from a
source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called the Eagle.
     3. Human beings are also composed of an incalculable number of the same
threadlike  energy  fields.  These  Eagle's  emanations   form  an   encased
agglomeration that manifests itself  as  a ball  of light  the  size of  the
person's body with the arms extended laterally, like a giant luminous egg.
     4. Only  a very  small  group of the energy fields inside this luminous
ball are  lit up  by a point of  intense  brilliance  located  on the ball's
surface.
     5.  Perception  occurs  when the  energy  fields  in  that small  group
immediately  surrounding  the point  of  brilliance  extend  their light  to
illuminate identical energy  fields outside the  ball. Since the only energy
fields  perceivable are those lit by  the point of brilliance, that point is
named "the  point where  perception is assembled" or simply  "the assemblage
point."
     6.  The assemblage  point can be moved from its usual  position on  the
surface of the luminous ball to another position on the surface, or into the
interior. Since the brilliance of the assemblage point can light up whatever
energy field it  comes in contact  with, when it  moves to a new position it
immediately  brightens  up  new energy fields, making them perceivable. This
perception is known as seeing.
     7.  When  the assemblage point shifts, it makes possible the perception
of  an entirely different  world  - as objective  and  factual as the one we
normally  perceive. Sorcerers go into that other world to get energy, power,
solutions to general and particular problems, or to face the unimaginable.
     8. Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive.  We do not
become aware  because  we  perceive; rather, we perceive as a  result of the
pressure and intrusion of intent.
     9. The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order
to experience  all  the  possibilities of perception  available to man. This
state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
     A level  of practical knowledge was  included  as part  of teaching the
mastery of awareness. On that practical level don Juan taught the procedures
necessary to move the assemblage point. The two great systems devised by the
sorcerer seers  of  ancient  times to  accomplish  this were:  dreaming, the
control and utilization of dreams; and stalking, the control of behavior.
     Moving  one's assemblage point  was an  essential  maneuver  that every
sorcerer had to learn. Some of them, the naguals, also learned to perform it
for  others.  They  were  able to dislodge  the  assemblage  point  from its
customary position  by delivering a hard  slap  directly to  the  assemblage
point. This  blow, which  was experienced as  a smack  on the right shoulder
blade -  although  the body was never  touched  -  resulted  in  a  state of
heightened awareness.
     In compliance with his tradition, it was exclusively in these states of
heightened awareness that don Juan carried
     out  the most  important  and  dramatic  part  of  his  teachings:  the
instructions  for  the  left  side.  Because of the extraordinary quality of
these states, don Juan demanded that I not discuss them with others until we
had concluded everything in  the sorcerers' teaching scheme. That demand was
not  difficult for  me to  accept. In  those unique states  of awareness  my
capabilities for understanding the instruction  were  unbelievably enhanced,
but  at the same time  my capabilities for describing or even remembering it
were  impaired. I  could function  in  those  states  with  proficiency  and
assuredness, but I  could not recollect anything about them  once I returned
to my normal consciousness.
     It  took  me  years to be  able to  make  the crucial conversion of  my
enhanced awareness  into  plain memory. My reason  and  common sense delayed
this  moment  because they  were  colliding  head-on  with the preposterous,
unthinkable  reality of heightened awareness and direct knowledge. For years
the resulting cognitive disarrangement  forced me  to avoid the issue by not
thinking about it.
     Whatever I have written about my sorcery apprenticeship, up to now, has
been a recounting of how don Juan taught me the mastery of awareness. I have
not yet described the art of stalking or the mastery of intent.
     Don  Juan taught me their  principles and applications with the help of
two of his companions:  a  sorcerer named  Vicente Medrano and another named
Silvio Manuel,  but whatever I  learned from them still  remains  clouded in
what Don  Juan called the intricacies of heightened  awareness. Until now it
has  been impossible for  me to write or  even to think coherently about the
art of stalking and the mastery of  intent.  My  mistake has been to  regard
them as subjects for normal  memory and recollection.  They are, but  at the
mime time they are not.  In order to resolve  this contradiction, I have not
pursued  the  subjects directly  -  a virtual impossibility - but have dealt
with them indirectly through the concluding topic of don Juan's instruction:
the stories of the sorcerers of the past.
     He recounted these  stories to make evident what he called the abstract
cores of  his  lessons. But I  was incapable of  grasping  the nature of the
abstract  cores despite his  comprehensive explanations, which, I  know now,
were  intended more to open my mind  than to explain anything in a  rational
manner.  His way  of  talking  made  me  believe  for many  years  that  his
explanations of the abstract cores were like academic dissertations; and all
I was able to do, under these circumstances, was to take his explanations as
given. They became part of my tacit acceptance of his teachings, but without
the thorough assessment on my part that was essential to understanding them.
     Don Juan  presented three sets of six abstract  cores each, arranged in
an increasing level of complexity. I  have  dealt  here with the  first set,
which  is composed of the following:  the  manifestations of the spirit, the
knock of the  spirit, the trickery of the spirit, the descent of the spirit,
the requirements of intent, and handling intent.

     THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SPIRIT

     The First Abstract Core

     Don  Juan,  whenever it was  pertinent, used to tell  me  brief stories
about the  sorcerers  of  his  lineage, especially  his  teacher, the nagual
Julian.  They were  not really stories,  but rather descriptions of the  way
those  sorcerers  behaved  and  of  aspects  of their  personalities.  These
accounts  were  each designed  to shed  light  on  a  specific  topic  in my
apprenticeship.
     I had  heard the same stories  from the  other  fifteen  members of don
Juan's group of sorcerers, but none of these accounts had been able  to give
me  a  clear picture of the  people they described. Since I  had  no  way of
persuading  don  Juan to give me more details about those  sorcerers, I  had
resigned myself to the idea of never knowing about them in any depth.
     One  afternoon, in the mountains of  southern Mexico,  don  Juan, after
having  explained  to  me  more  about the  intricacies  of  the mastery  of
awareness, made a statement that completely baffled me.
     "I  think it's time for us to talk about the sorcerers of our past," he
said.
     Don  Juan  explained  that  it  was  necessary  that  I  begin  drawing
conclusions based on a systematic view of the past,
     conclusions  about both the world of daily  affairs and  the sorcerers'
world.
     "Sorcerers are  vitally  concerned  with  their past," he said.  "But I
don't mean their  personal past.  For sorcerers  their  past  is what  other
sorcerers  in  bygone  days  have done. And  what  we are now going to do is
examine that past.
     "The  average man also examines the past. But  it's mostly his personal
past he  examines, and he  does so for personal  reasons. Sorcerers do quite
the opposite;  they consult  their  past  in  order  to  obtain  a point  of
reference."
     "But isn't that what everyone does?  Look at the past to get a point of
reference?"
     "No!"  he  answered  emphatically.  "The average man  measures  himself
against the past,  whether  his  personal past or the past knowledge  of his
time, in order to find justifications for his present or future behavior, or
to establish  a model for himself. Only  sorcerers genuinely seek a point of
reference in their past."
     "Perhaps, don Juan, things would be  clear to me if you tell me  what a
point of reference for a sorcerer is."
     "For  sorcerers, establishing a  point  of  reference  means  getting a
chance  to  examine  intent" he replied. "Which is exactly  the aim  of this
final topic of instruction. And nothing can give sorcerers  a better view of
intent than examining stories  of other sorcerers battling to understand the
same force."
     He explained  that  as they examined  their  past, the sorcerers of his
lineage took careful notice of the basic abstract order of their knowledge.
     "In sorcery there  are twenty-one  abstract cores," don Juan  went  on.
"And  then, based  on  those  abstract cores,  there  are scores  of sorcery
stories about the naguals of our  lineage battling to understand the spirit.
It's time to tell you the abstract cores and the sorcery stories."
     I  waited for don Juan to begin telling me the stories, but  he changed
the subject and went back to explaining awareness.
     "Wait a minute," I protested. "What  about the  sorcery stories? Aren't
you going to tell them to me?"
     "Of course I  am," he said. "But they are not stories that one can tell
as if  they  were tales.  You've got to think your way through them and then
rethink them - relive them, so to speak."
     There was a long silence. I became very cautious and was afraid that if
I  persisted  in  asking  him  again  to  tell  me  the stories, I could  be
committing myself to  something  I might later regret. But  my curiosity was
greater than my good sense.
     "Well, let's get on with them," I croaked.
     Don  Juan,  obviously  catching  the  gist  of   my  thoughts,   smiled
maliciously. He stood and signaled me to follow. We had been sitting on some
dry rocks at the  bottom of a gully. It was mid-afternoon.  The sky was dark
and  cloudy. Low, almost-black rain  clouds  hovered  above the peaks to the
east. In comparison, the high clouds made  the sky seem clear to  the south.
Earlier it had rained heavily, but then the rain seemed to have retreated to
a hiding place, leaving behind only a threat.
     I should have been chilled to the bone, for it was very cold. But I was
warm. As I clutched a rock  don  Juan had  given me to hold, I realized that
this sensation of being warm in nearly freezing weather was familiar to  me,
yet it amazed  me  each  time. Whenever I  seemed about to freeze,  don Juan
would give  me a branch to  hold,  or  a  stone, or he would put a bunch  of
leaves  under  my  shirt,  on  the  tip of  my sternum, and  that  would  be
sufficient to raise my body temperature.
     I had tried unsuccessfully to recreate, by  myself,  the effect of  his
ministrations. He told me it was not the ministrations but his inner silence
that kept me warm, and the branches or stones or leaves were  merely devices
to trap my attention and maintain it in focus.
     Moving quickly,  we climbed the steep west side  of a mountain until we
reached a rock  ledge at the very top. We were in the foothills of a  higher
range  of mountains. From the rock  ledge I could see that fog had begun  to
move  onto the  south end of the valley floor below  us.  Low,  wispy clouds
seemed to be closing  in on us, too, sliding down from the black-green, high
mountain peaks  to the  west. After the rain, under the dark  cloudy sky the
valley and the mountains to the east  and south appeared covered in a mantle
of black-green silence.
     "This is the ideal place to have a talk," don Juan said, sitting on the
rock floor of a concealed shallow cave.
     The cave was perfect for the  two  of us to sit side by side. Our heads
were nearly touching the roof and our backs fitted snugly against the curved
surface of the rock wall. It was as if the cave had been carved deliberately
to accommodate two persons of our size.
     I noticed  another  strange  feature of  the  cave: when I stood on the
ledge, I could see the entire valley and the mountain ranges to the east and
south, but when I sat down, I was boxed  in by  the rocks. Yet the ledge was
at the level of the cave floor, and flat.
     I was  about  to  point  this strange effect out to don  Juan,  but  he
anticipated me.
     "This cave is  man-made," he  said.  "The  ledge is slanted but the eye
doesn't register the incline."
     "Who made this cave, don Juan?"
     "The ancient sorcerers. Perhaps thousands of years  ago. And one of the
peculiarities of this cave is that animals and insects and  even people stay
away from it. The ancient sorcerers seem to have infused it  with an ominous
charge that makes every living thing feel ill at ease."
     But  strangely I felt irrationally secure  and happy there. A sensation
of physical contentment made my entire body tingle. I actually felt the most
agreeable, the most delectable, sensation  in my stomach. It  was  as if  my
nerves were being tickled.
     "I don't feel ill at ease," I commented.
     "Neither do I," he said. "Which only  means that you and  I aren't that
far temperamentally from those  old  sorcerers of the past;  something which
worries me no end."
     I was afraid to pursue that subject any further, so I waited for him to
talk.
     "The  first  sorcery  story  I  am going  to tell  you is  called  'The
Manifestations of the Spirit,'  " don  Juan began, "but don't  let the title
mystify you.  The manifestations  of the spirit is  only the  first abstract
core around which the first sorcery story is built.
     "That first abstract core is a story in itself," he went on. "The story
says  that once upon  a time  there  was a  man, an average man  without any
special attributes.  He was, like everyone else,  a conduit  for the spirit.
And by virtue of that,  like everyone else, he was part of the spirit,  part
of the  abstract. But he didn't know it. The world kept him so  busy that he
had neither the time nor the inclination really to examine the matter.
     "The  spirit  tried,  uselessly,  to reveal their  connection. Using an
inner voice, the  spirit disclosed its secrets, but the man was incapable of
understanding the revelations. Naturally, he heard the inner  voice,  but he
believed it to be  his own feelings  he was feeling  and his own thoughts he
was thinking.
     "'The spirit, in order to shake him  out of his slumber, gave him three
signs, three successive manifestations. The
     spirit  physically crossed  the man's path in the most  obvious manner.
But the man was oblivious to anything but his self-concern."
     Don Juan stopped and looked at me as he did whenever he was waiting for
my  comments  and questions. I had nothing to say.  I did not understand the
point he was trying to make.
     "I've just told you the first  abstract  core," he continued. "The only
other thing I  could add is that because of the man's absolute unwillingness
to understand,  the  spirit was forced to use  trickery. And trickery became
the essence of the sorcerers' path. But that is another story."
     Don Juan explained that sorcerers understood this abstract core to be a
blueprint for events, or a recurrent pattern that appeared every time intent
was giving an indication of something meaningful. Abstract cores, then, were
blueprints of complete chains of events.
     He assured me that by means beyond comprehension, every detail of every
abstract core reoccurred to  every apprentice nagual.  He further assured me
that he had helped intent to involve me in all the abstract cores of sorcery
in the same  manner  that his  benefactor, the  nagual  Julian  and all  the
naguals  before him, had involved  their apprentices. The  process by  which
each apprentice  nagual encountered the abstract cores  created a  series of
accounts  woven around  those  abstract cores  incorporating  the particular
details of each apprentice's personality and circumstances.
     He said, for example, that I had my  own story about the manifestations
of the  spirit,  he  had his, his benefactor had his own,  so had the nagual
that preceded him, and so on, and so forth.
     "What is  my story  about the  manifestations of the  spirit?" I asked,
somewhat mystified.
     "If any  warrior is aware of his stories it's you," he replied.  "After
all, you've been  writing  about them for years. But you  didn't notice  the
abstract cores  because you are a practical man. You do everything only  for
the purpose  of  enhancing  your  practicality.  Although  you handled  your
stories to  exhaustion you had  no idea that  there was an abstract  core in
them. Everything I've done appears to  you, therefore, as an often-whimsical
practical activity:  teaching sorcery  to a reluctant and, most of the time,
stupid, apprentice. As long as you see it in those terms, the abstract cores
will elude you."
     "You must forgive me, don Juan," I  said, "but your statements are very
confusing. What are you saying?"
     "I'm trying to introduce the sorcery stories as a subject," he replied.
"I've  never  talked   to   you   specifically  about  this  topic   because
traditionally it's left hidden. It is the spirit's last artifice. It is said
that when  the  apprentice understands  the  abstract  cores  it's  like the
placing of the stone that caps and seals a pyramid."
     It was getting dark and it looked as though it was about to rain again.
I  worried that if the wind blew  from east to west while it was raining, we
were going  to  get soaked in that cave.  I was sure  don Juan was aware  of
that, but he seemed to ignore it.
     "It won't rain again until tomorrow morning," he said.
     Hearing my inner thoughts being answered made me jump involuntarily and
hit the top of my head  on the cave roof. It  was a thud  that sounded worse
than it felt.
     Don Juan held his sides laughing. After a while my head really began to
hurt and I had to massage it.
     "Your  company is  as  enjoyable to me as  mine  must have been  to  my
benefactor," he said and began to laugh again.
     We  were quiet for a few minutes. The silence around  me was ominous. I
fancied that I could  hear the rustling of the low  clouds as they descended
on us from the higher mountains. Then I realized that what I was hearing was
the soft wind. From  my position in the shallow cave,  it  sounded  like the
whispering of human voices.
     "I had the incredible good luck to be  taught by two naguals," don Juan
said  and  broke the mesmeric grip the  wind  had on me at that moment. "One
was, of  course, my  benefactor, the  nagual  Julian, and the other  was his
benefactor, the nagual Elias. My case was unique."
     "Why was your case unique?" I asked.
     "Because for generations  naguals have gathered their apprentices years
after their  own teachers have  left  the world,"  he explained.  "Except my
benefactor. I became  the nagual Julian's apprentice eight  years before his
benefactor  left  the world. I  had eight years'  grace. It was the luckiest
thing that could have happened to me, for I had the opportunity to be taught
by two opposite temperaments. It  was like being reared by a powerful father
and  an even more powerful grandfather who don't see eye to eye.  In  such a
contest, the grandfather  always  wins. So I'm  properly  the product of the
nagual Elfas's teachings.  I was  closer to him not only in  temperament but
also in looks. I'd say that  I owe him my fine tuning. However, the  bulk of
the work that went into turning me from a miserable being into an impeccable
warrior I owe to my benefactor, the nagual Julian."
     "What was the nagual Julian like physically?" I asked.
     "Do you know that to  this day it's hard for  me to visualize him?" don
Juan said. "I  know that sounds absurd, but  depending on  his needs or  the
circumstances, he could be either young or  old, handsome  or homely, effete
and weak or strong and virile, fat or slender, of medium height or extremely
short."
     "Do you mean he was an actor acting out different roles with the aid of
props?"
     "No, there were  no props involved and  he  was not merely an actor. He
was, of course, a great actor in his  own right, but that is different.  The
point is that he was capable  of transforming himself and becoming all those
diametrically opposed  persons.  Being a great actor enabled  him to portray
all the minute peculiarities of behavior that made each specific being real.
Let us say that he was at  ease in every change of being. As you are at ease
in every change of clothes."
     Eagerly,  I  asked don Juan  to  tell  me more about  his  benefactor's
transformations.  He said  that  someone  taught  him  how  to  elicit those
transformations, but that to explain any further would force him to  overlap
into different stories.
     "What  did the  nagual Julian  look  like when  he wasn't  transforming
himself?" I asked.
     "Let's  say  that before he  became  a  nagual he  was  very  slim  and
muscular," don Juan said.  "His hair  was  black, thick, and  wavy. He had a
long, fine nose, strong big white teeth, an oval face, strong jaw, and shiny
dark-brown eyes. He was about five feet eight inches tall. He was not Indian
or even a brown  Mexican,  but  he was not Anglo white either. In  fact, his
complexion seemed to be like no one else's,  especially  in his  later years
when his ever-changing complexion shifted constantly from dark to very light
and back again to  dark. When I  first met him he was a light-brown old man,
then as time went by, he became a light-skinned  young  man, perhaps  only a
few years older than me. I was twenty at that time.
     "But if the changes of his outer appearance were astonishing," don Juan
went  on,  "the   changes  of  mood  and  behavior   that  accompanied  each
transformation were  even more  astonishing. For example, when he was  a fat
young man, he was jolly and sensual.  When  he  was a skinny old man, he was
petty  and  vindictive.  When he  was a  fat old man,  he  was the  greatest
imbecile there was."
     "Was he ever himself?" I asked.
     "Not the  way  I am myself,"  he replied. "Since I'm  not interested in
transformation I am always the same.  But  he  was not  like me at all." Don
Juan  looked at me  as if he were  assessing  my inner strength.  He smiled,
shook his head from side to side and broke into a belly laugh.
     "What's so funny, don Juan?" I asked.
     "The  fact is that  you're  still too  prudish and stiff to  appreciate
fully  the nature of my benefactor's transformations and their total scope,"
he  said.  "I  only  hope that when  I tell  you about them you don't become
morbidly obsessed."
     For some reason I suddenly became quite uncomfortable and had to change
the subject.
     "Why are the naguals  called 'benefactors' and not simply teachers?"  I
asked nervously.
     "Calling a nagual a benefactor is a gesture his apprentices make,"  don
Juan  said.  "A  nagual creates an overwhelming feeling of  gratitude in his
disciples.  After  all,   a  nagual  molds  them  and  guides  them  through
unimaginable areas."
     I  remarked  that  to  teach  was  in  my  opinion  the  greatest, most
altruistic act anyone could perform for another.
     "For  you,  teaching  is  talking  about  patterns,"  he  said. "For  a
sorcerer, to  teach is what a  nagual does  for his apprentices. For them he
taps the  prevailing force in the universe: intent - the force  that changes
and reorders things or keeps them as  they are. The nagual  formulates, then
guides the consequences that that force can  have on  his disciples. Without
the nagual's molding intent there  would be no awe, no wonder  for them. And
his apprentices, instead  of embarking on a magical  journey  of  discovery,
would only  be learning  a trade: healer,  sorcerer, diviner, charlatan,  or
whatever."
     "Can you explain intent to me?" I asked.
     "The only  way  to know intent" he replied,  "is  to  know it  directly
through a  living  connection that  exists between intent  and all  sentient
beings. Sorcerers call intent  the indescribable, the  spirit, the abstract,
the nagual.  I would prefer to call it nagual, but it overlaps with the name
for the leader, the benefactor, who is also  called nagual,  so I have opted
for calling it the spirit, intent, the abstract."
     Don Juan stopped abruptly and  recommended  that I keep quiet and think
about what  he had  told me.  By then it was very dark.  The  silence was so
profound  that instead of lulling me into a restful state, it agitated me. I
could  not maintain order in my thoughts. I  tried to focus my  attention on
the story he had  told  me,  but instead I thought of everything else, until
finally I fell asleep.

     The Impeccability Of The Nagual Elias

     I had no way of telling how long I slept in that cave. Don Juan's voice
startled me  and  I  awoke.  He  was  saying that  the  first  sorcery story
concerning  the  manifestations  of  the  spirit  was   an  account  of  the
relationship between intent and the nagual.  It was  the  story  of  how the
spirit set up a lure for the nagual,  a prospective disciple, and of how the
nagual had to evaluate the lure before making  his decision either to accept
or  reject  it. It  was  very dark  in the  cave, and  the  small space  was
confining.  Ordinarily  an  area   of   that   size  would  have   made   me
claustrophobic, but  the  cave kept soothing  me, dispelling my feelings  of
annoyance. Also,  something in the configuration of the  cave  absorbed  the
echoes of don Juan's words.
     Don Juan explained that every act performed by sorcerers, especially by
the naguals, was either  performed as a way to  strengthen  their  link with
intent  or  as a  response triggered  by  the link  itself.  Sorcerers,  and
specifically the naguals,  therefore  had to be actively and  permanently on
the lookout  for  manifestations  of  the spirit. Such  manifestations  were
called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens.
     He repeated a story he had already told me; the story of how he had met
his benefactor, the nagual Julian.
     Don  Juan  had been  cajoled  by  two crooked men to take  a job on  an
isolated hacienda. One of the men, the foreman of the hacienda,  simply took
possession of don Juan and in effect made him a slave.
     Desperate and  with  no other  course  of action, don Juan escaped. The
violent foreman chased him and caught him on  a  country  road where he shot
don Juan in the chest and left him for dead.
     Don Juan was lying unconscious in the road, bleeding to death, when the
nagual  Julian  came  along.  Using  his  healer's knowledge, he stopped the
bleeding, took don Juan, who was still unconscious, home and cured him.
     The indications the spirit gave  the nagual Julian about don Juan were,
first,  a small  cyclone that lifted a  cone of dust on the road a couple of
yards from where he lay. The second omen was the thought which  had  crossed
the nagual Julian's  mind  an instant before he had heard  the report of the
gun a few yards away: that it was time to have an apprentice nagual. Moments
later,  the spirit  gave him the third  omen, when he ran to take cover  and
instead collided with the gunman,  putting him to flight, perhaps preventing
him from  shooting don Juan  a second time. A collision with someone was the
type of blunder which no sorcerer, much less a nagual, should ever make.
     The nagual Julian  immediately  evaluated the opportunity. When he  saw
don Juan he understood the reason for the spirit's manifestation: here was a
double man, a perfect candidate to be his apprentice nagual.
     This brought up a nagging rational concern for  me. I wanted to know if
sorcerers  could  interpret  an  omen  erroneously.  Don Juan  replied  that
although my question sounded perfectly legitimate, it was inapplicable, like
the majority  of my  questions, because I asked them based on my experiences
in  the  world  of  everyday  life.  Thus  they  were  always  about  tested
procedures,  steps  to  be followed,  and rules of  meticulousness, but  had
nothing to do with the premises of sorcery. He pointed out that  the flaw in
my reasoning was  that  I  always failed  to include my  experiences in  the
sorcerers' world.
     I  argued that very few of  my experiences in the  sorcerers' world had
continuity, and therefore  I  could  not make use of those experiences in my
present day-to-day life. Very  few times, and only  when I  was in states of
profound heightened awareness,  had I remembered everything. At the level of
heightened  awareness  I  usually  reached,  the  only experience  that  had
continuity between past and present was that of knowing him.
     He  responded  cuttingly  that  I was perfectly capable of  engaging in
sorcerers'  reasonings because I had experienced the sorcery premises  in my
normal state of awareness.  In a more  mellow  tone he added that heightened
awareness  did not  reveal  everything  until the  whole edifice  of sorcery
knowledge was completed.
     Then  he answered  my  question about  whether or  not  sorcerers could
misinterpret omens. He explained that when a sorcerer interpreted an omen he
knew its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knew it. This was
one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent. Sorcerers
had a sense  of knowing things directly.  How sure they were depended on the
strength and clarity of their connecting link.
     He  said  that  the  feeling  everyone  knows  as  "intuition"  is  the
activation of our link with intent.  And since sorcerers deliberately pursue
the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said that they
intuit everything unerringly  and  accurately.  Reading omens is commonplace
for sorcerers  -  mistakes happen only when personal  feelings intervene and
cloud the  sorcerers' connecting link  with intent.  Otherwise  their direct
knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
     We remained quiet for a while.
     All of a sudden  he said,  "I am going  to tell you  a  story about the
nagual Elias  and  the  manifestation of the  spirit.  The spirit  manifests
itself to a sorcerer, especially to  a nagual,  at every turn. However, this
is not the entire truth. The entire truth is that  the spirit reveals itself
to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only sorcerers, and
naguals in particular, are attuned to such revelations."
     Don Juan began his story. He said that the nagual Elias had been riding
his horse  to  the  city one  day, taking  him  through  a  shortcut by some
cornfields when suddenly his horse  shied, frightened by the low, fast sweep
of a falcon that missed  the  nagual's straw  hat  by only a few inches. The
nagual immediately dismounted and  began to look around. He  saw  a  strange
young  man  among  the tall,  dry  cornstalks.  The man  was  dressed in  an
expensive dark suit and  appeared alien there.  The nagual Elias was used to
the sight of peasants or landowners in the fields, but he had never seen  an
elegantly dressed city man moving through the fields with apparent disregard
for his expensive shoes and clothes.
     The  nagual  tethered  his  horse and walked  toward the young  man. He
recognized  the  flight of  the  falcon, as well as the  man's  apparel,  as
obvious  manifestations of  the spirit which he could  not disregard. He got
very close to the young man and saw what was going on. The man was chasing a
peasant woman who was running a few yards ahead of him, dodging and laughing
with him.
     The contradiction was quite apparent  to  the nagual.  The  two  people
cavorting in the cornfield  did not belong together. The nagual thought that
the man must be the landowner's son and the woman a servant in the house. He
felt embarrassed to be observing them  and  was about to turn and leave when
the falcon again  swept over  the cornfield and this time brushed the  young
man's head. The falcon  alarmed the couple and they  stopped and  looked up,
trying to anticipate another sweep. The nagual noticed that the man was thin
and handsome, and had haunting, restless eyes.
     Then  the  couple became bored watching for the falcon, and returned to
their play.  The man caught the woman,  embraced her and gently  laid her on
the ground. But instead of trying to make love to her, as the nagual assumed
he would do next, he removed his  own clothes and  paraded naked in front of
the woman.
     She  did  not  shyly  close her eyes or  scream  with  embarrassment or
fright. She giggled, mesmerized by  the prancing naked man, who moved around
her  like a satyr, making lewd  gestures  and laughing.  Finally, apparently
overpowered by the sight, she  uttered  a wild cry, rose, and  threw herself
into the young man's arms.
     Don  Juan  said  that  die  nagual Elias  confessed  to  him  that  the
indications  of the spirit on that  occasion had been most  baffling. It was
clearly evident that  the man was insane. Otherwise, knowing how  protective
peasants were  of their women, he would not have considered seducing a young
peasant woman in broad daylight a few  yards  from the  road - and  naked to
boot.
     Don Juan  broke into a laugh and told me that in those days to take off
one's clothes and engage in  a sexual act in  broad daylight in such a place
meant one had to be  either  insane or blessed by the spirit. He added  that
what the man had done might not seem remarkable nowadays. But then, nearly a
hundred years ago, people were infinitely more inhibited.
     All of this convinced the nagual Elias from  the moment he laid eyes on
the man that he was both  insane and blessed by the spirit.  He worried that
peasants might happen by, become enraged and lynch the man  on the spot. But
no one did. It felt to the nagual as if time had been suspended.
     When the  man finished  making love, he put  on his clothes, took out a
handkerchief,  meticulously dusted his shoes and, all  the while making wild
promises  to the girl, went on  his way. The nagual  Elias  followed him. In
fact,  he followed  him for several days  and found  out that his  name  was
Julian and that he was an actor.
     Subsequently  the nagual saw him  on the stage often  enough to realize
that the actor had  a great  deal of charisma.  The audience, especially the
women, loved him. And he had no scruples about making use of his charismatic
gifts to seduce female admirers.  As the  nagual followed the actor,  he was
able to witness his seduction technique more than once. It  entailed showing
himself naked to his adoring fans as soon as he got them alone, then waiting
until the  women,  stunned by his display, surrendered. The technique seemed
extremely effective for him. The nagual had to  admit that the  actor was  a
great success, except on one count. He was mortally ill. The nagual had seen
the black shadow of death that followed him everywhere.
     Don Juan explained again something  he had told me years before  - that
our  death was a black spot right  behind  the left  shoulder. He said  that
sorcerers knew when a  person was close to dying because they  could see the
dark  spot,  which became a moving shadow the  exact size  and  shape of the
person to whom it belonged.
     As he  recognized the imminent presence of death the nagual was plunged
into a numbing perplexity.  He wondered why the spirit was singling out such
a sick person. He had been taught that in a  natural  state replacement, not
repair, prevailed.  And  the nagual doubted that he  had the ability  or the
strength to heal this young man, or resist the black shadow of his death. He
even doubted if he would be able to discover why the spirit had involved him
in a display of such obvious waste.
     The nagual could do nothing but stay with the actor, follow him around,
and  wait  for the opportunity  to see  in greater depth. Don Juan explained
that a nagual's first reaction, upon being faced with the manifestations  of
the spirit, is  to see the  persons involved.  The  nagual  Elias  had  been
meticulous about  seeing the man the moment he laid eyes on him. He had also
seen  the peasant woman who was part of the  spirit's manifestation, but  he
had seen nothing  that, in his judgment, could have  warranted the  spirit's
display.
     In the course  of witnessing  another seduction, however,  the nagual's
ability to see took on a new depth. This time
     the actor's adoring fan was the daughter of a rich landowner. And  from
the  start she  was  in complete  control. The  nagual found out about their
rendezvous because he overheard  her daring the  actor to meet her the  next
day. The  nagual was hiding  across the street at dawn when  the young woman
left her  house,  and  instead of going to early mass she went  to  join the
actor. The actor was waiting for her and she coaxed him  into  following her
to the open fields.  He appeared to hesitate, but she taunted him  and would
not allow him to withdraw.
     As the nagual watched them sneaking away, he had an absolute conviction
that something was going to happen on that day which  neither of the players
was  anticipating. He saw that the actor's black shadow had grown  to almost
twice  his height. The  nagual deduced from the mysterious hard  look in the
young  woman's eyes that she too had felt the black  shadow of  death at  an
intuitive level. The actor seemed preoccupied. He did not laugh as he had on
other occasions.
     They walked quite  a  distance.  At one point, they spotted  the nagual
following them, but he instantly pretended to be working the land, a peasant
who  belonged there. That made  the couple  relax and allowed the nagual  to
come closer.
     Then the moment  came when the actor tossed off his clothes and  showed
himself to the girl. But  instead of swooning and falling  into his arms  as
his other conquests had, this girl began to  hit him. She kicked and punched
him mercilessly and stepped on his bare toes, making him cry out with pain.
     The  nagual  knew the man had not threatened or harmed the young woman.
He had  not  laid a  finger on her. She was the  only  one  fighting. He was
merely trying to parry the blows, and persistently, but without  enthusiasm,
trying to entice her by showing her his genitals.
     The  nagual  was  filled with  both revulsion and admiration.  He could
perceive  that  the actor  was  an irredeemable libertine, but he could also
perceive equally easily that there was something unique, although revolting,
about him. It baffled the nagual to see that the man's connecting link  with
the spirit was extraordinarily clear.
     Finally the attack ended.  The  woman stopped  beating the  actor.  But
then, instead of running away, she surrendered,  lay down and told the actor
he could now have his way with her.
     The nagual  observed  that the man was so exhausted he was  practically
unconscious. Yet despite his fatigue he went right ahead and consummated his
seduction.
     The nagual was laughing and pondering that useless  man's great stamina
and determination  when the woman screamed and the actor  began to gasp. The
nagual  saw how  the black shadow  struck the  actor. It went like a dagger,
with pinpoint accuracy into his gap.
     Don Juan made a digression at this  point to elaborate on  something he
had explained before: he had described  the gap, an opening in  our luminous
shell at  the height  of  the navel, where the  force  of  death ceaselessly
struck. What don Juan now explained was that when  death hit  healthy beings
it was with a ball-like blow  -  like the punch of a  fist. But when  beings
were dying, death struck them with a dagger-like thrust.
     Thus  the nagual  Elias knew without any question that the actor was as
good as dead, and his death  automatically finished his own interest in  the
spirit's designs. There were no designs left; death had leveled everything.
     He  rose from his hiding place and started to leave when something made
him  hesitate. It was  the  young woman's  calmness.  She  was  nonchalantly
putting on the  few pieces of clothing she had  taken off  and was whistling
tunelessly as if nothing had happened.
     And  then  the nagual  saw  that in relaxing to accept the presence  of
death, the man's  body had released a protecting  veil and revealed his true
nature. He was a double man of tremendous  resources, capable  of creating a
screen  for  protection  or disguise  -  a  natural sorcerer and  a  perfect
candidate for a nagual apprentice, had  it not been for the  black shadow of
death.
     The nagual  was completely taken aback by that sight. He now understood
the designs of the spirit, but failed  to comprehend how such a  useless man
could fit in the sorcerers' scheme of things.
     The woman in the meantime had stood up and without so much as  a glance
at the man, whose body was contorting with death spasms, walked away.
     The  nagual then  saw her  luminosity and  realized  that  her  extreme
aggressiveness was the  result of an enormous flow of superfluous energy. He
became convinced that if she did not put that energy  to sober use, it would
get the best of her and there was no telling what misfortunes it would cause
her.
     As the  nagual watched  the  unconcern  with which she  walked away, he
realized  that the  spirit had given him another manifestation. He needed to
be calm, nonchalant. He needed  to  act as if  he  had nothing  to lose  and
intervene for  the  hell of it. In true nagual  fashion he decided to tackle
the impossible, with no one except the spirit as witness.
     Don Juan commented  that it took  incidents like this to test whether a
nagual is the real thing or  a fake.  Naguals make decisions. With no regard
for the consequences they take action or choose not to. Imposters ponder and
become paralyzed. The nagual  Elias* having made his decision, walked calmly
to the side of the dying man and did the first thing his body, not his mind,
compelled him  to do:  he struck the man's assemblage point to  cause him to
enter into heightened  awareness. He  struck him frantically again and again
until his  assemblage point moved. Aided by the  force  of death itself, the
nagual's  blows sent the man's assemblage point to a  place where  death  no
longer mattered, and there he stopped dying.
     By the time the actor was breathing  again, the nagual had become aware
of the magnitude of his responsibility. If the man was to fend off the force
of his  death, it would be  necessary for him  to  remain in deep heightened
awareness  until death  had  been  repelled.  The  man's  advanced  physical
deterioration  meant he  could  not  be  moved from the  spot  or  he  would
instantly   die.   The   nagual  did  the  only  thing  possible  under  the
circumstances: he built a shack around the body.  There, for three months he
nursed the totally immobilized man.
     My rational thoughts took over, and instead of just listening, I wanted
to know how the nagual Elias could  build a shack  on someone else's land. I
was aware  of  the  rural  peoples'  passion  about land  ownership  and its
accompanying feelings of territoriality.
     Don Juan  admitted that he had asked the same question himself. And the
nagual Elias had said  that the spirit itself had made it possible. This was
the case with  everything  a  nagual  undertook, providing  he  followed the
spirit's manifestations.
     The first thing  the nagual Elias  did, when  the  actor  was breathing
again, was  to run  after the young woman. She was an important  part of the
spirit's  manifestation.  He  caught up with her not too far from  the  spot
where the actor lay barely alive. Rather than talking to her about the man's
plight and trying  to convince  her  to help him,  he  again  assumed  total
responsibility for  his actions and jumped on her like a lion, striking  her
assemblage point a mighty blow. Both  she  and  the  actor  were  capable of
sustaining life  or  death blows. Her assemblage point  moved, but  began to
shift erratically once it was loose.
     The nagual  carried the  young  woman  to where the actor lay.  Then he
spent  the entire day trying to keep her  from losing her mind  and the  man
from losing  his  life. . When he was  fairly  certain  he had  a  degree of
control he went to the  woman's father and told him that lightning must have
struck his daughter  and made her temporarily  mad. He  took the  father  to
where she lay and said that  the young man, whoever  he was, had  taken  the
whole  charge  of  the lightning with his  body, thus saving the  girl  from
certain death, but injuring himself to the point that he could not be moved.
     The grateful father  helped the  nagual build the shack for the man who
had  saved his  daughter.  And in three  months the nagual accomplished  the
impossible. He healed the young man.
     When the time came for the nagual to leave, his sense of responsibility
and  his  duty required him  both to  warn the young woman about her  excess
energy  and  the injurious  consequences it would have on her life  and well
being, and  to ask  her to  join  the sorcerers' world, as that would be the
only defense against her self-destructive strength.
     The woman did not respond. And the nagual Elias was obliged to tell her
what every nagual has said to a prospective apprentice throughout  the ages:
that  sorcerers  speak of  sorcery as a magical, mysterious  bird which  has
paused in  its  flight for a moment in order  to give man hope and  purpose;
that sorcerers live under the wing of that bird, which they call the bird of
wisdom, the bird of freedom; that they nourish it  with their dedication and
impeccability.  He told her  that sorcerers knew the  flight of the bird  of
freedom was always a straight line, since it had no way of making a loop, no
way  of circling back and returning; and that the  bird  of freedom could do
only two things, take sorcerers along, or leave them behind.
     The nagual  Elias  could  not talk to the young actor,  who  was  still
mortally ill, in the same way. The young man did not have much of a  choice.
Still, the nagual told him that  if he wanted  to be cured, he would have to
follow the nagual unconditionally. The actor accepted the terms instantly.
     The  day the nagual Elias and the  actor started  back home,  the young
woman was waiting silently at  the edge  of town. She carried no  suitcases,
not  even a basket.  She seemed to  have  come merely  to see  them off. The
nagual kept walking without looking at her, but  the actor, being carried on
a stretcher, strained to  say goodbye to  her. She  laughed  and  wordlessly
merged into  the nagual's  party. She  had no  doubts and  no problem  about
leaving everything behind.  She had  understood perfectly that  there was no
second chance for her, that the bird  of freedom either took sorcerers along
or left them behind.
     Don Juan commented  that  that was  not surprising.  The  force  of the
nagual's personality was  always  so overwhelming  that  he was  practically
irresistible, and the nagual Elias had affected  those two people deeply. He
had  had  three  months  of  daily  interaction  to  accustom  them  to  his
consistency,  his  detachment, his objectivity. They had become enchanted by
his sobriety and,  above all, by  his  total dedication to them. Through his
example and his actions, the nagual Elfas had given them a sustained view of
the sorcerers'  world: supportive and nurturing, yet  utterly  demanding. It
was a world that admitted very few mistakes.
     Don Juan reminded me then of something  he had repeated to me often but
which  I had always managed not to  think about. He  said that  I should not
forget,  even for  an instant, that  the  bird  of  freedom  had very little
patience with indecision, and when it flew away, it never returned.
     The chilling resonance of his voice made the surroundings, which only a
second  before  had been peacefully dark, burst  with  immediacy.  Don  Juan
summoned the peaceful darkness back as fast as  he had summoned urgency.  He
punched me lightly on the arm. "That  woman was so powerful  that  she could
dance circles around anyone," he said. "Her name was Talia."

     THE KNOCK OF THE SPIRIT

     The Abstract

     We returned to don Juan's  house in the early hours  of the morning. It
took us a  long time to climb down the mountain, mainly because I was afraid
of stumbling into a precipice in the dark, and don Juan had to keep stopping
to catch the breath he lost laughing at me.
     I was dead tired, but I could not fall asleep. Before noon, it began to
rain. The sound of the heavy downpour on the tile roof, instead of making me
feel drowsy, removed every trace of sleepiness.
     I  got up and went to look for don Juan. I found him dozing in a chair.
The moment I approached him he was wide-awake. I said good morning.
     "You seem to be having no trouble falling asleep," I commented.
     "When you have been afraid or upset, don't lie down  to sleep," he said
without looking at me. "Sleep sitting up on a soft chair as I'm doing."
     He had suggested once that if I wanted to give  my body healing  rest I
should take long naps,  lying on my stomach with my face turned to the  left
and  my  feet  over  the foot of the bed. In order to avoid  being  cold, he
recommended I
     put a soft pillow over my  shoulders, away from my neck, and wear heavy
socks, or just leave my shoes on.
     When  I first heard his suggestion, I thought he  was  being funny, but
later  changed  my  mind.   Sleeping  in   that  position   helped  me  rest
extraordinarily well. When I commented on the surprising results, he advised
that I follow his suggestions to the letter without bothering to believe  or
disbelieve him.
     I  suggested to don Juan that he  might have told me the  night  before
about the sleeping in a  sitting position. I explained to him that the cause
of my sleeplessness, besides my extreme fatigue, was a strange concern about
what he had told me in the sorcerer's cave.
     "Cut  it out!"  he  exclaimed. "You've  seen  and heard infinitely more
distressing  things  without  losing  a moment's  sleep.  Something else  is
bothering you."
     For a moment I thought he meant I was not being truthful with him about
my real preoccupation. I began  to explain, but he kept talking  as if I had
not spoken.
     "You stated categorically last night that the cave didn't make you feel
ill at  ease," he said. "Well, it obviously did. Last night  I didn't pursue
the subject of  the cave any  further  because I was waiting to observe your
reaction."
     Don Juan  explained that  the  cave had been designed  by sorcerers  in
ancient times  to  serve  as  a  catalyst.  Its  shape  had  been  carefully
constructed to accommodate two people as two fields of energy. The theory of
the sorcerers was that the nature of the rock and the manner in which it had
been carved allowed the two  bodies,  the  two luminous balls, to intertwine
their energy.
     "I took you to that cave on purpose," he continued, "not because I like
the place  - I don't - but because  it was created as an instrument to  push
the apprentice  deep  into  heightened  awareness. But unfortunately, as  it
helps, it also obscures  issues. The  ancient  sorcerers  were not given  to
thought. They leaned toward action."
     "You always say that your benefactor was like that," I said.
     "That's  my own exaggeration," he answered, "very much like when I  say
you're a fool. My benefactor was a modern nagual, involved in the pursuit of
freedom, but he leaned  toward  action instead  of thoughts. You're a modern
nagual,  involved  in  the same quest,  but  you  lean  heavily  toward  the
aberrations of reason."
     He must have thought his comparison was very funny; his laughter echoed
in the empty room.
     When I  brought the conversation  back to the subject of  the cave,  he
pretended  not to hear me. I knew he was pretending because of the glint  in
his eyes and the way he smiled.
     "Last night, I deliberately told you the first abstract core," he said,
"in the hope that by reflecting on the way  I  have acted with you  over the
years you'll get an idea about the other cores. You've  been  with me for  a
long time so you know me very well. During every minute of our association I
have tried to adjust my actions and thoughts to the patterns of the abstract
cores.
     "The nagual Elias's story is another matter. Although it seems to  be a
story  about  people,  it is  really  a story about  intent.  Intent creates
edifices before  us and invites us to enter them.  This is the way sorcerers
understand what is happening around them."
     Don Juan reminded me that I had  always  insisted on trying to discover
the  underlying  order in  everything  he  said  to  me. I  thought  he  was
criticizing me for my attempt to turn whatever  he  was teaching  me into  a
social science problem.  I began to tell him  that  my  outlook had  changed
under his influence. He stopped me and smiled.
     "You really don't think too well," he  said and  sighed. "I want you to
understand the underlying order of what I teach you. My objection is to what
you think is the underlying order.  To you,  it means secret procedures or a
hidden consistency. To me, it means two things: both the edifice that intent
manufactures in the blink of an eye and places in  front of us to enter, and
the signs it gives us so we won't get lost once we are inside.
     "As you can  see, the story of the nagual Elias was more than merely an
account of  the sequential  details that  made up the  event,"  he went  on.
"Underneath all that  was the edifice  of intent. And the story was meant to
give  you an  idea of  what  the  naguals of the past were like, so that you
would recognize how they acted in order to adjust their thoughts and actions
to the edifices of intent"
     There was a prolonged silence. I did  not have anything to say.  Rather
than  let the conversation die, I said  the first  thing that came  into  my
mind. I said that from the stories I had heard about  the nagual Elfas I had
formed a  very positive opinion of  him. I liked  the nagual  Elfas, but for
unknown  reasons, everything don Juan  had told  me about  the nagual Julian
bothered me.
     The mere mention of my discomfort delighted don Juan beyond measure. He
had to stand up from his chair lest he choke on his laughter. He put his arm
on  my shoulder and said that  we  either  loved  or  hated  those who  were
reflections of ourselves.
     Again a silly  self-consciousness prevented me from asking him  what he
meant. Don  Juan  kept  on  laughing, obviously aware of my mood. He finally
commented  that the  nagual Julian  was  like  a  child  whose sobriety  and
moderation  came always from without. He had no inner  discipline beyond his
training as an apprentice in sorcery.
     I had  an irrational urge to  defend myself.  I told  don  Juan that my
discipline came from within me.
     "Of  course,"  he  said  patronizingly.  "You  just can't expect to  be
exactly like him." And began to laugh again.
     Sometimes  don Juan exasperated me so that I was ready to  yell. But my
mood  did not  last. It dissipated so rapidly that another  concern began to
loom. I asked don Juan if it Was possible that I had entered into heightened
awareness Without being conscious of it? Or maybe I had  remained in  it for
days?
     "At this stage you enter into heightened awareness all by yourself," he
said.  "Heightened awareness is a mystery Only for our reason.  In practice,
it's very simple. As with everything else, we  complicate matters  by trying
to make the immensity that surrounds us reasonable."
     He  remarked  that I should be thinking about the abstract core he  had
given me instead of arguing uselessly about my person.
     I told him that I had been thinking about  it all morning  and had come
to realize that the metaphorical theme of the story  was the  manifestations
of the spirit. What I could not  discern, however, was the abstract  core he
was talking
     about. It had to be something unstated.
     "I  repeat," he  said,  as if  he  were  a schoolteacher  drilling  his
students, "the Manifestations  of  the  Spirit  is the  name  for  the first
abstract core in the sorcery stories. Obviously, what sorcerers recognize as
an abstract core is something that bypasses  you  at this moment.  That part
Which escapes  you sorcerers know as the edifice of  intent,  or the  silent
voice of the spirit, or the ulterior arrangement of the abstract."
     I said I understood ulterior to mean something not Overtly revealed, as
in "ulterior motive." And  he replied that in this case ulterior meant more;
it  meant  knowledge without words,  outside  our immediate  comprehension -
especially mine. He  allowed  that the comprehension he was referring to was
merely  beyond  my  aptitudes  of  the   moment,  not   beyond  my  ultimate
possibilities for understanding.
     "If the abstract cores are beyond my comprehension  what's the point of
talking about them?" I asked.
     "The rule says that the abstract  cores and the sorcery stories must be
told at  this point," he replied. "And some  day the ulterior arrangement of
the abstract, which is knowledge without  words  or  the edifice  of  intent
inherent in the stories, will be revealed to you by the stories themselves."
     I still did not understand.
     "The ulterior arrangement of  the  abstract is not  merely the order in
which the abstract cores were presented to you," he explained, "or what they
have in common either, nor even the web that joins them. Rather it's to know
the abstract directly, without the intervention of language."
     He scrutinized me in silence from head to  toe with the obvious purpose
of seeing me.
     "It's not evident to you yet," he declared.
     He made a gesture of impatience,  even short temper,  as though he were
annoyed  at  my  slowness. And that worried me. Don  Juan  was not  given to
expressions of psychological displeasure.
     "It has nothing to do  with you or your actions,"  he said when I asked
if he was angry or  disappointed with me.  "It was a thought that crossed my
mind  the moment I saw  you. There is a feature in your luminous  being that
the old sorcerers would have given anything to have."
     "Tell me what it is," I demanded.
     "I'll remind you of this some other time," he said.
     "Meanwhile,  let's  continue  with the  element  that propels  us:  the
abstract.  The element without which  there could be no  warrior's path, nor
any warriors in search of knowledge."
     He said  that the difficulties I was experiencing were  nothing  new to
him. He himself had gone through agonies in order to understand the ulterior
order  of  the  abstract.  And had it not been for the helping  hand of  the
nagual Elias, he would  have wound up just  like his benefactor, all  action
and very little understanding.
     "What was the nagual Elias like?" I asked, to change the subject.
     "He  was  not like his disciple at  all,"  don  Juan said.  "He  was an
Indian.  Very  dark  and  massive. He had rough features, big  mouth, strong
nose, small black eyes, thick black hair with no gray in  it. He was shorter
than  the  nagual Julian and had big hands and  feet. He was very humble and
very wise, but he had  no flare.  Compared with my benefactor, he was  dull.
Always all by himself, pondering questions.  The nagual Julian  used to joke
that his teacher imparted wisdom by the ton. Behind his back he used to call
him the nagual Tonnage.
     "I never saw the reason for his jokes,"  don Juan went on.  "To me  the
nagual  Elias  was  like a breath of fresh  air. He would patiently  explain
everything to me. Very much as I  explain  things to you, but perhaps with a
bit more of something. I wouldn't call it compassion,  but rather,  empathy.
Warriors are incapable of  feeling compassion because  they  no longer  feel
sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of  self-pity, compassion is
meaningless."
     "Are you saying, don Juan, that a warrior is all for himself?"
     "In  a way, yes. For a warrior everything begins and ends with himself.
However, his contact with the abstract causes him to overcome his feeling of
self-importance. Then the self becomes abstract and impersonal.
     "The nagual Elias felt that our lives and our personalities were  quite
similar," don Juan continued. "For this reason, he  felt obliged to help me.
I  don't feel that similarity with you, so  I suppose I regard you very much
the way the nagual Julian used to regard me."
     Don Juan said  that the  nagual Elias took him under his  wing from the
very  first  day   he  arrived  at  his  benefactor's  house  to  start  his
apprenticeship  and began to  explain what was taking place in his training,
regardless  of whether don  Juan was capable  of understanding. His urge  to
help  don  Juan was so  intense  that  he  practically held him prisoner. He
protected him in this manner from the nagual Julian's harsh onslaughts.
     "At the beginning, I used  to  stay at the nagual Elfas's house all the
time," don Juan continued. "And  I loved it. In  my benefactor's house I was
always on  the  lookout, on guard,  afraid of what he was going to do  to me
next. But in the Nagual Elias's home I felt confident, at ease.
     "My benefactor used to press me mercilessly. And I couldn't figure  out
why he was pressuring me so hard. I thought that the man was plain crazy."
     Don  Juan  said that the nagual Elias was an Indian from  the  state of
Oaxaca, who had been taught by another  nagual named  Rosendo, who came from
the  same  area.  Don  Juan  described  the  nagual Elias  as  being a  very
conservative man who cherished his privacy. And  yet he was a  famous healer
and  sorcerer,  not   only  in  Oaxaca,  but  in  all  of  southern  Mexico.
Nonetheless, in spite of his occupation  and notoriety, he lived in complete
isolation at the opposite end of the country, in northern Mexico.
     Don Juan  stopped talking. Raising  his eyebrows, he fixed  me  with  a
questioning look. But all I wanted was for him to continue his story.
     "Every single time I  think you should ask  questions,  you don't,"  he
said. "I'm sure you heard me say that the nagual Elias was a famous sorcerer
who dealt with people daily in southern Mexico, and at the  same time he was
a hermit in northern Mexico. Doesn't that arouse your curiosity?"
     I felt abysmally  stupid. I told him  that the  thought  had crossed my
mind, as he was  telling me those facts, that the man must have had terrible
difficulty commuting.
     Don Juan laughed, and,  since he had  made me aware of  the question, I
asked how it had been possible for the nagual Elias to  be in  two places at
once.
     "Dreaming is a  sorcerer's  jet plane," he said. The nagual Elias was a
dreamer as my benefactor was a  stalker.  He was able  to create and project
what  sorcerers  know as the dreaming body, or the  Other, and to  be in two
distant places  at  the same time. With his dreaming body, he could carry on
his business as a sorcerer, and with his natural self be a recluse."
     I remarked that it amazed me that I could  accept so easily the premise
that  the  nagual Elias had the ability to project a solid three-dimensional
image  of himself, and yet  could not  for  the  life of  me understand  the
explanations about the abstract cores.
     Don Juan said that I could accept the idea of  the nagual Elfas's  dual
life  because  the spirit was making  final adjustments in  my  capacity for
awareness. And I exploded into a barrage of protests at the obscurity of his
statement.
     "It isn't obscure," he said.  "It's a statement of fact. You could  say
that  it's  an  incomprehensible  fact for the moment,  but the  moment will
change."
     Before I could reply, he began to talk again about the nagual Elias. He
said that the nagual Elias had a  very inquisitive  mind and could work well
with  his hands. In his journeys as a dreamer he saw many  objects, which he
copied in wood  and  forged iron. Don Juan  assured  me  that  some of those
models were of a haunting, exquisite beauty.
     "What kind of objects were the originals?" I asked.
     "There's no  way of knowing,"  don  Juan said. "You've got  to consider
that  because he  was  an  Indian the nagual  Elias went  into his  dreaming
journeys the way a wild animal prowls for food.  An animal never shows up at
a  site when there are signs of  activity.  He comes  only  when  no one  is
around. The  nagual Elias,  as a solitary  dreamer, visited,  let's say, the
junkyard of  infinity, when  no one was around - and copied whatever he saw,
but never knew what those things were used for, or their source."
     Again, I had  no trouble accepting what he was saying. The idea did not
appear  to  me  farfetched in  any way.  I was  about  to  comment  when  he
interrupted me with a gesture of his eyebrows. He then continued his account
about the nagual Elias.
     "Visiting  him  was   for  me  the  ultimate  treat,"   he  said,  "and
simultaneously, a source  of  strange guilt. I  used to  get bored  to death
there.  Not  because  die nagual Elfas  was boring,  but because the  nagual
Julian had no peers and he spoiled anyone for life."
     "But  I thought  you were confident and  at  ease in the nagual Elias's
house," I said.
     "I was,  and that was  the  source of my guilt and my imagined problem.
Like you, I loved to torment myself.  I  think at the very beginning I found
peace  in the  nagual Elias's  company, but later on, when I understood  the
nagual Julian better, I went his way."
     He told me that the nagual Elias's house had an open, roofed section in
the front, where he had a forge and a
     carpentry bench and tools. The  tiled-roof adobe house consisted  of  a
huge room with a  dirt floor where he lived  with five women seers, who were
actually  his wives. There were also four  men, sorcerer-seers of his  party
who lived in small houses around  the nagual's house. They were  all Indians
from different parts of the country who had migrated to northern Mexico.
     "The nagual Elias had great respect for sexual  energy," don Juan said.
"He believed  it  has been  given to us so we can use  it  in  dreaming.  He
believed dreaming had fallen into disuse because it can upset the precarious
mental balance of susceptible people.
     "I've taught you dreaming the same way he taught me," he continued. "He
taught me that while we  dream the assemblage point moves  very  gently  and
naturally. Mental balance is nothing but the fixing  of the assemblage point
on one  spot  we're  accustomed  to.  If  dreams make that  point move,  and
dreaming  is used to  control that  natural  movement,  and sexual energy is
needed  for dreaming, the result is sometimes disastrous when sexual  energy
is  dissipated  in  sex  instead  of  dreaming.  Then  dreamers  move  their
assemblage point erratically and lose their minds."
     "What are you trying to tell me, don Juan?" I asked because I felt that
the subject of dreaming had not been a natural drift in the conversation.
     "You are a  dreamer"  he said. "If you're not careful  with your sexual
energy, you might as well  get  used to the  idea of erratic  shifts of your
assemblage point. A moment ago you were bewildered by  your reactions. Well,
your assemblage point  moves almost erratically, because  your sexual energy
is not in balance." I made a stupid and inappropriate comment  about the sex
life of adult males.
     "Our sexual energy is what governs dreaming," he explained. "The nagual
Elfas taught me - and I  taught you -  that  you either make love  with your
sexual  energy or  you dream with it. There is no other  way.  The  reason I
mention it  at all  is because you are having great difficulty shifting your
assemblage point to grasp our last topic: the abstract.
     "The same thing happened to me," don Juan went on. "It was only when my
sexual  energy was freed from the world that everything fit into place. That
is the  rule for dreamers. Stalkers are the opposite. My benefactor was, you
could say, a sexual libertine both as an average man and as a nagual."
     Don  Juan  seemed  to be  on the  verge  of  revealing his benefactor's
doings, but he obviously changed his mind. He shook his head and said that I
was way too stiff for such revelations. I did not insist.
     He  said that  the  nagual  Elfas had  the  sobriety that only dreamers
acquired after  inconceivable battles with themselves. He used his  sobriety
to plunge himself into the task of answering don Juan's questions.
     "The nagual  Elfas explained that my  difficulty  in  understanding the
spirit was  the same as his own," don Juan continued. "He thought there were
two different issues. One, the need to understand indirectly what the spirit
is, and the other, to understand the spirit directly.
     "You're  having problems with  the  first. Once you understand what the
spirit is, the second issue will be  resolved automatically, and vice versa.
If the spirit speaks to you, using its silent words, you will certainly know
immediately what the spirit is."
     He  said that the nagual  Elfas  believed  that  the difficulty was our
reluctance to accept the idea that  knowledge could  exist without  words to
explain it.
     "But I have no difficulty accepting that," I said.
     "Accepting  this proposition is not as  easy as  saying you accept it,"
don Juan said. "The nagual Elfas  used to tell me that the whole of humanity
has moved away from  the  abstract, although at one time we must  have  been
close to  it. It  must  have been our  sustaining force. And  then something
happened and pulled us away from the abstract.  Now we can't get back to it.
He used to  say that it takes years for an apprentice to be able to  go back
to  the  abstract, that  is, to know that  knowledge and language  can exist
independent of each other."
     Don Juan repeated that the crux of our difficulty in going  back to the
abstract was our refusal to accept that we could know without words  or even
without thoughts.
     I was going to argue that he was talking nonsense when I got the strong
feeling I was missing something and that his point was of crucial importance
to me. He  was really trying to tell me  something, something I either could
not grasp or which could not be told completely.
     "Knowledge and language are separate," he repeated softly.
     And I was just about to  say, "I know it," as if indeed I knew it, when
I caught myself.
     "I told you there is no way  to talk about  the  spirit," he continued,
"because the  spirit can only  be experienced. Sorcerers try to explain this
condition when they  say that the spirit is nothing you can see or feel. But
it's there looming over us always. Sometimes it comes to some of us. Most of
the time it seems indifferent."
     I  kept quiet. And he continued to explain. He said that the spirit  in
many ways was a sort of  wild animal. It  kept its distance from  us until a
moment when  something  enticed it  forward. It  was then  that  the  spirit
manifested itself.
     I raised the  point that if the spirit wasn't an entity, or a presence,
and had no essence, how could anyone entice it?
     "Your problem," he said,  "is that you consider only your own  idea  of
what's abstract. For instance, the  inner essence of man, or the fundamental
principle,  are abstracts  for  you. Or  perhaps something a bit less vague,
such as character, volition, courage, dignity, honor. The spirit, of course,
can be  described in terms of all of these. And that's what's so confusing -
that it's all these and none of them."
     He  added that what I considered abstractions were either the opposites
of all the practicalities I could think  of or things  I had decided did not
have concrete existence.
     "Whereas for  a sorcerer an abstract is something with  no  parallel in
the human condition," he said.
     "But they're the same thing," I shouted. "Don't you see that we're both
talking about the same thing?"
     "We are  not," he insisted. "For a sorcerer, the spirit is  an abstract
simply because he knows it without words or even thoughts.  It's an abstract
because  he  can't conceive what the  spirit is. Yet without  the  slightest
chance  or  desire  to  understand  it, a  sorcerer handles  the  spirit. He
recognizes  it,  beckons  it, entices  it,  becomes  familiar with  it,  and
expresses it with his acts."
     I shook my head in despair. I could not see the difference.
     "The root of your misconception is that I have used the term 'abstract'
to describe  the  spirit,"  he said.  "For  you, abstracts are  words  which
describe states of intuition. An example is the word 'spirit,' which doesn't
describe reason or pragmatic experience, and which, of course, is  of no use
to you other than to tickle your fancy."
     I  was furious with don Juan. I called him obstinate  and he laughed at
me. He suggested that if I would think  about the proposition that knowledge
might  be independent  of  language,  without  bothering to  understand  it,
perhaps I could see the light.
     "Consider this," he  said.  "It  was  not  the  act of  meeting me that
mattered  to  you. The day  I  met you, you met the abstract. But since  you
couldn't talk  about  it, you didn't notice it. Sorcerers meet  the abstract
without  thinking about  it  or seeing  it or touching  it  or  feeling  its
presence."
     I remained quiet because I did not  enjoy arguing with him. At  times I
considered him  to  be quite willfully abstruse.  But don  Juan seemed to be
enjoying himself immensely.

     The Last Seduction Of Nagual Julian

     It was as cool and  quiet in the patio of don  Juan's house as  in  the
cloister of a  convent.  There were a number  of large fruit  trees  planted
extremely  close together,  which  seemed  to regulate  the  temperature and
absorb  all  noises.  When I first came to  his  house, I had made  critical
remarks about the illogical  way the fruit  trees had been planted. I  would
have  given them more space. His answer  was that  those trees  were not his
property, they were free and independent warrior trees that  had joined  his
party of warriors, and  that my comments -  which applied to regular trees -
were not  relevant. His reply sounded metaphorical to me. What I didn't know
then was that don Juan meant everything he said literally.
     Don Juan and I were sitting  in  cane armchairs facing  the fruit trees
now.  The trees were all bearing  fruit. I commented  that it was not only a
beautiful  sight but  an extremely intriguing one, for it  was not the fruit
season.
     "There is an  interesting story  about it," he  admitted. "As you know,
these trees  are warriors of my party. They are bearing now because  all the
members of  my party  have been  talking and expressing  feelings about  our
definitive journey, here in front of  them. And the trees know now that when
we embark on our definitive journey, they will accompany us."
     I looked at him, astonished.
     "I can't leave them behind," he explained. "They are warriors too. They
have thrown their lot in with the nagual's party. And they know  how  I feel
about  them. The assemblage  point  of trees is  located  very low in  their
enormous luminous  shell, and that  permits  them to know our  feelings, for
instance,  the feelings  we  are having now  as  we  discuss  my  definitive
journey."
     I remained quiet, for I  did not want to dwell on the subject. Don Juan
spoke and dispelled my mood.
     "The second abstract core of the sorcery stories is called the Knock of
the  Spirit," he said. "The first core, the Manifestations of the Spirit, is
the edifice  that intent builds and places  before  a sorcerer, then invites
him to  enter. It is the edifice  of intent seen by a sorcerer. The Knock of
the Spirit  is the same  edifice  seen  by the beginner who is invited  - or
rather forced - to enter.
     "This second abstract core could  be a story in itself. The  story says
that after the spirit had manifested itself to that man we have talked about
and had gotten no response, the  spirit laid  a  trap for  the man. It was a
final  subterfuge,  not  because  the  man  was  special,  but  because  the
incomprehensible  chain  of events of the spirit made that man available  at
the very moment that the spirit knocked on the door.
     "It goes without  saying that whatever the spirit  revealed to that man
made no sense to him. In fact,  it  went against  everything  the man  knew,
everything  he was.  The  man,  of  course,  refused on the  spot, and in no
uncertain terms, to have anything to  do with the spirit. He wasn't going to
fall for such preposterous nonsense. He knew better. The result was a  total
stalemate.
     "I  can say  that this is an idiotic story," he  continued. "I  can say
that what  I've  given  you is the pacifier for those who  are uncomfortable
with the silence of the abstract."
     He peered at me for a moment and then smiled.
     "You  like  words,"  he  said  accusingly.  "The  mere idea  of  silent
knowledge  scares you.  But stories, no matter how  stupid, delight you  and
make you feel secure."
     His smile was so mischievous that I couldn't help laughing.
     Then he  reminded me  that I had already heard his  detailed account of
the first time the spirit had knocked on his  door. For a moment I could not
figure out what he was talking about.
     "It was not just my benefactor who stumbled upon me as I was dying from
the gunshot," he explained. "The spirit also found me and knocked on my door
that day. My benefactor understood that he was there to be a conduit for the
spirit. Without the spirit's intervention, meeting  my benefactor would have
meant nothing."
     He  said that  a  nagual  can be a  conduit  only after  the spirit has
manifested its willingness to be used -  either almost imperceptibly or with
outright commands. It was therefore not possible for a nagual to choose  his
apprentices according to his own volition, or his own calculations. But once
the- willingness of the spirit was revealed through omens, the nagual spared
no effort to satisfy it.
     "After a lifetime of practice,"  he  continued,  "sorcerers, naguals in
particular,  know if the  spirit is inviting them to enter the edifice being
flaunted before them. They have learned to discipline their connecting links
to intent. So they are always forewarned, always know what the spirit has in
store for them."
     Don Juan said that progress along the sorcerers' path was,  in general,
a drastic process the  purpose of which was to bring this connecting link to
order.  The average man's connecting link with intent  is  practically dead,
and sorcerers begin with a link that is useless, because it does not respond
voluntarily.
     He  stressed  that  in  order to revive  that link sorcerers  needed  a
rigorous, fierce purpose - a special state of  mind called unbending intent.
Accepting that the nagual was the only being capable of  supplying unbending
intent  was  the  most difficult part  of the sorcerer's  apprenticeship.  I
argued that I could not see the difficulty.
     "An  apprentice is  someone  who is striving  to  clear  and revive his
connecting  link with the spirit," he explained. "Once the link  is revived,
he is no longer an apprentice, but until  that time, in order to  keep going
he  needs a fierce purpose, which, of course, he doesn't have. So he  allows
the nagual to provide the purpose and  to  do  that he has to relinquish his
individuality. That's the difficult part."
     He reminded me of something he had told me  often: that volunteers were
not welcome in  the sorcerers' world, because they already had a purpose  of
their  own,  which made  it particularly hard for them  to  relinquish their
individuality. If the sorcerers' world  demanded ideas and  actions contrary
to the volunteers' purpose, the volunteers simply refused to change.
     "Reviving  an apprentice's  link  is a  nagual's most  challenging  and
intriguing work," don Juan continued, "and one of his biggest headaches too.
Depending,  of  course, on the  apprentice's personality, the designs of the
spirit are either sublimely simple or the most complex labyrinths."
     Don Juan  assured me  that,  although I  might have had notions  to the
contrary, my apprenticeship had not been as  onerous to him as his must have
been to his  benefactor. He admitted that I had a modicum of self-discipline
that came in very handy, while he had had none whatever. And his benefactor,
in turn, had had even less.
     "The difference is discernible in the manifestations of the spirit," he
continued. "In some cases, they are barely noticeable; in my case, they were
commands. I had been shot.  Blood was pouring out of a hole  in my chest. My
benefactor had  to act with speed  and sureness, just as his own  benefactor
had for him. Sorcerers know that the more difficult the command is, the more
difficult the disciple turns out to be."
     Don Juan explained that  one of  the most  advantageous aspects of  his
association with  two  naguals was that  he could hear the same stories from
two opposite  points of view. For instance, the story about the nagual Elias
and the manifestations of the spirit, from the apprentice's perspective, was
the story of the spirit's difficult knock on his benefactor's door.
     "Everything connected with  my benefactor was very difficult,"  he said
and  began to laugh. "When he was  twenty-four years old, the spirit  didn't
just knock on his door, it nearly banged it down."
     He  said  that  the  story  had  really begun  years  earlier, when his
benefactor had been a handsome adolescent from a good family in Mexico City.
He was wealthy, educated, charming, and had a charismatic personality. Women
fell in love-with him at first sight. But he was already  self-indulgent and
undisciplined,  lazy  about  anything  that  did  not   give  him  immediate
gratification.
     Don Juan said  that with that personality and his type  of upbringing -
he was the only son of a wealthy widow who,
     together  with his four  adoring sisters, doted on  him - he could only
behave one way. He indulged  in  every impropriety  he could  think of. Even
among his equally self-indulgent friends, he  was seen as a moral delinquent
who lived to do anything that the world considered morally wrong.
     In  the  long  run,  his excesses weakened him  physically  and he fell
mortally ill with tuberculosis -  the dreaded disease  of  the time. But his
illness,  instead of restraining him, 'created a physical condition in which
he  felt  more  sensual  than  ever.  Since  he did  not have  one  iota  of
self-control,  he  gave  himself over fully  to debauchery,  and  his health
deteriorated until there was no hope.
     The saying that it never rains but it pours was certainly true  for don
Juan's benefactor then. As his health declined, his mother, who was his only
source  of  support  and the only restraint  on  him, died. She  left  him a
sizable inheritance, which should  have  supported him adequately for  life,
but undisciplined as he was, in a  few months he had  spent every cent. With
no  profession  or  trade to  fall  back on, he was  left  to scrounge for a
living.
     Without  money he  no longer had friends; and  even  the women who once
loved him turned their  backs.  For the  first time  in his  life, he  found
himself confronting a harsh reality. Considering the state of his health, it
should  have been the end.  But he was  resilient. He  decided to work for a
living.
     His sensual habits,  however, could not be changed, and they forced him
to seek  work  in  the  only place  he  felt  comfortable: the theater.  His
qualifications were  that he was a born ham and had spent most  of his adult
life in the  company of  actresses. He  joined a  theatrical  troupe in  the
provinces, away from his familiar circle of friends and
     acquaintances, and became a very intense actor, the consumptive hero in
religious and morality plays.
     Don  Juan commented on  the strange  irony that had  always marked  his
benefactor's life. There  he was, a perfect reprobate, dying as a  result of
his dissolute  ways and playing  the roles of  saints and  mystics.  He even
played Jesus in the Passion Play during Holy Week.
     His  health lasted through one theatrical  tour of the northern states.
Then two things happened in the city of Durango: his life came to an end and
the spirit knocked on his door.
     Both his death and the spirit's knock came at the same time -  in broad
daylight  in the bushes. His death caught him in the act of seducing a young
woman. He was already extremely weak, and that day  he overexerted  himself.
The young  woman, who was vivacious and  strong and madly infatuated, had by
promising to make  love  induced him  to  walk to a secluded spot miles from
nowhere.  And  there  she  had  fought him off for  hours.  When she finally
submitted, he was completely worn out, and  coughing so  badly that he could
hardly breathe.
     During  his last  passionate outburst  he  felt a searing  pain  in his
shoulder.  His chest felt as if  it were  being ripped  apart and a coughing
spell made  him retch uncontrollably. Hut his compulsion  to  seek  pleasure
kept him going until his death came in the form of a hemorrhage. It was then
that  the spirit made  its entry,  borne by an Indian  who  came to his aid.
Earlier he had noticed the Indian  following them around, but  had not given
him a second thought, absorbed as he was in the seduction.
     He saw,  as in a dream, the girl.  She was not scared nor  did she lose
her composure. Quietly and efficiently she put her clothes back on and  took
off as fast as a rabbit chased by hounds.
     He also saw the  Indian rushing to him  trying to  make him  sit up. He
heard him saying idiotic things. He heard him pledging himself to the spirit
and mumbling incomprehensible words  in a foreign language. Then the  Indian
acted very quickly. Standing  behind him, he gave him a smacking blow on the
back.
     Very rationally,  the dying  man  deduced  that  the Indian was  trying
either to dislodge the blood clot or to kill him.
     As the Indian struck  him repeatedly on the back, the dying man  became
convinced that the Indian was the woman's lover or husband and was murdering
him. But seeing the intensely brilliant eyes of that Indian,  he changed his
mind. He knew that the  Indian was simply crazy  and was not  connected with
the woman. With his  last bit of consciousness,  he focused his attention on
the man's  mumblings. What  he was saying  was  that  the  power  of man was
incalculable, that death  existed only  because we had intended it since the
moment of  our birth, that the intent of death could be suspended by  making
the assemblage point change positions.
     He then knew that the Indian was  totally insane. His situation  was so
theatrical - dying at the hands of a crazy  Indian mumbling gibberish - that
he vowed he would be  a ham actor to the bitter end, and he promised himself
not to die of either the  hemorrhaging or the blows, but to die of laughter.
And he laughed until he was dead.
     Don Juan remarked that naturally his benefactor could not possibly have
taken the  Indian seriously.  No one could  take such  a  person  seriously,
especially  not  a  prospective  apprentice  who  was  not  supposed  to  be
volunteering for the sorcery task.
     Don Juan then said that he had given me different versions of what that
sorcery  task consisted. He  said  it would not be presumptuous  of  him  to
disclose  that, from  the  spirit's point  of view, the  task  consisted  of
clearing our connecting link with it. The edifice that intent flaunts before
us  is,  then,  a  clearinghouse,  within which  we  find  not so  much  the
procedures to clear our connecting link as the silent knowledge  that allows
the clearing process to take place. Without that silent knowledge no process
could work, and all we would have would  be  an indefinite sense  of needing
something.
     He explained  that the  events unleashed  by sorcerers  as  a result of
silent  knowledge  were so  simple  and yet so abstract that  sorcerers  had
decided  long  ago  to  speak of those  events only in  symbolic  terms. The
manifestations and the knock of the spirit were examples.
     Don Juan said  that, for  instance, a  description of what  took  place
during  the  initial meeting between a  nagual and a prospective  apprentice
from the sorcerers' point of view, would be  absolutely incomprehensible. It
would be nonsense  to  explain that  the nagual,  by  virtue of his lifelong
experience, was focusing something we couldn't imagine, his second attention
- the increased awareness gained through sorcery training - on his invisible
connection  with some indefinable abstract. He was  doing this to  emphasize
and  clarify  someone  else's  invisible  connection with  that  indefinable
abstract.
     He remarked that each of us was barred from silent knowledge by natural
barriers,  specific to each individual; and that  the most impregnable of my
barriers was the drive to disguise my complacency as independence.
     I challenged him to give me a concrete example. I reminded .him that he
had  once  warned  me that a favorite  debating  ploy  was to  raise general
criticisms that could not be supported by concrete examples. Don Juan looked
at me and beamed.
     "In the past, I used to give you power plants," he said.
     "At first, you went to extremes to convince yourself that what you were
experiencing  were  hallucinations.  Then  you  wanted  them  to  be special
hallucinations. I remember I  made fun of  your  insistence on calling  them
didactic hallucinatory experiences."
     He said that my need to prove my illusory independence forced me into a
position  where  I  could not  accept  what he  had told  me was  happening,
although it  was what I  silently knew for myself. I  knew he  was employing
power plants, as the  very limited tools they were, to make me enter partial
or  temporary  states of heightened  awareness by moving my assemblage point
away from its habitual location.
     "You   used  your  barrier  of  independence  to   get  you  over  that
obstruction," he went on. "The same  barrier has  continued to work  to this
day,  so you still retain  that sense of indefinite anguish, perhaps  not so
pronounced. Now the  question is, how are you arranging  your conclusions so
that your current experiences fit into your scheme of complacency?"
     I confessed that the only way I could maintain my  independence was not
to think about my experiences at all.
     Don Juan's hearty laugh nearly made him  fall out of his cane chair. He
stood and  walked around to catch his breath. He sat down again and composed
himself. He pushed his chair back and crossed his legs.
     He said that we, as average  men did not know, nor would we ever  know,
that it was something utterly real and functional - our connecting link with
intent - which gave us our hereditary preoccupation with fate.  He  asserted
that during our active lives we never have the chance to go beyond the level
of mere  preoccupation, because  since  time  immemorial  the lull of  daily
affairs  has made us drowsy. It is only when our  lives are nearly over that
our hereditary
     preoccupation with  fate  begins to  take on a different character.  It
begins to make us see through the  fog of daily affairs. Unfortunately, this
awakening always  comes  hand  in hand  with loss of energy caused by aging,
when  we have  no  more  strength left  to  turn  our preoccupation  into  a
pragmatic and  positive discovery.  At this  point,  all there is left is an
amorphous,  piercing anguish, a  longing  for something  indescribable,  and
simple anger at having missed out.
     "I  like  poems  for  many reasons," he said. "One  reason is that they
catch the mood of warriors and explain what can hardly be explained."
     He conceded  that poets were keenly aware of our  connecting link  with
the  spirit, but  that  they  were  aware  of  it  intuitively, not  in  the
deliberate, pragmatic way of sorcerers.
     "Poets have no firsthand knowledge of the spirit," he went on. "That is
why  their  poems cannot really  hit  the center  of true gestures  for  the
spirit. They hit pretty close to it, though."
     He  picked  up  one  of my  poetry books from a  chair  next to  him, a
collection  by Juan  Ramon  Jimenez.  He opened it to where he had  placed a
marker, handed it to me and signaled me to read.
     Is  it  I who walks tonight in  my room  or  is  it the  beggar who was
prowling in my garden at nightfall?
     I  look around and find that  everything  is the same and it is not the
same
     Was the window open?
     Had I not already fallen asleep?
     Was not the garden pale green? . . .
     The sly was clear and blue . . .
     And there are clouds
     and it is windy
     and the garden is dark and gloomy.
     I think that my hair was black . . .
     I was dressed in grey . . .
     And my hair is grey
     and I am wearing black . . .
     Is this my gait?
     Does this voice, which now resounds in me,
     have the rhythms of the voice I used to have?
     Am I myself or am I the beggar
     who was prowling in my garden
     at nightfall?
     I look around . . .
     There are clouds and it is windy . . .
     The garden is dark and gloomy . . .
     I come and go . . . Is it not true that I had already fallen asleep? My
hair is grey . . . And everything is the same and it is not the same . . .
     I  reread the poem to myself and I  caught the poet's mood of impotence
and bewilderment. I asked don Juan if he felt the same.
     "I think the  poet senses the  pressure of aging and  the  anxiety that
that realization produces," don Juan said. "But that is only one part of it.
The other part,  which interests  me, is that  the  poet,  although he never
moves  his assemblage  point,  intuits that  something  extraordinary is  at
stake. He  intuits with  great certainty that there  is some unnamed factor,
awesome because of its simplicity, that is determining our fate."

     THE TRICKERY OF THE SPIRIT

     Dusting The Link With The Spirit

     The  sun had not yet risen from behind  the eastern peaks, but the  day
was  already  hot. As we  reached the first steep  slope, a couple  of miles
along the  road from  the outskirts of  town, don  Juan  stopped walking and
moved to the side of the  paved  highway. He sat down  by some huge boulders
that had been dynamited from the face of the mountain when they cut the road
and signaled me to join him. We usually stopped there to talk or rest on our
way to the nearby mountains. Don Juan announced that this trip was going  to
be long and that we might be in the mountains for days.
     "We are  going to talk  now about  the  third abstract core," don  Juan
said.  "It  is  called  the  trickery of the spirit, or the trickery of  the
abstract, or stalking oneself, or dusting the link."
     I was surprised at the variety of names, but said nothing. I waited for
him to continue his explanation.
     "And  again, as with the  first and second core," he went on, "it could
be a story in itself. The story says that after knocking on the door of that
man we've been  talking  about, and having no success  with him, the  spirit
used the only means available: trickery. After  all, the spirit had resolved
previous impasses with trickery. It was obvious that if it wanted to make an
impact on this man it had to cajole him. So the spirit began to instruct the
man on the mysteries of Sorcery.  And the sorcery apprenticeship became what
it is: a route of artifice and subterfuge.
     "The story says that the spirit cajoled  the man  by making  him  shift
back  and forth between levels of awareness to  show  him how to save energy
needed to strengthen his connecting link."
     Don  Juan told me that if we apply his story to a modern netting we had
the  case  of the nagual, the living conduit of the  spirit,  repeating  the
structure of this abstract core and resorting to  artifice and subterfuge in
order to teach.
     Suddenly he stood and started to  walk  toward  the mountain  range.  I
followed him and we started our climb, side by side.
     In the very late  afternoon we reached  the top  of the high mountains.
Even at that  altitude  it was still  very warm. All day we  had  followed a
nearly  invisible trail.  Finally  we reached a small  clearing, an  ancient
lookout post commanding the north and west.
     We  sat there and  don Juan  returned our  conversation to  the sorcery
stories.  He  said that now I knew the story of intent manifesting itself to
the nagual Elias and the story of the spirit knocking on the nagual Julian's
door. And I knew how he had met the spirit, and I certainly could not forget
how I had met it.  All  these stories, he declared, had  the same structure;
only the  characters differed. Each story was  an  abstract tragicomedy with
one abstract  player, intent,  and  two human  actors,  the nagual  and  his
apprentice. The script was the abstract core.
     I thought I had finally understood what he meant, but I could not quite
explain even to myself what it was I understood,  nor could I  explain it to
don  Juan.  When  I tried  to  put  my thoughts into words  I  found  myself
babbling.
     Don  Juan seemed  to recognize my state of mind.  He  suggested  that I
relax  and  listen.  He told  me his  next  story  was  about the process of
bringing an  apprentice into the realm  of  the spirit,  a process sorcerers
called the trickery of the spirit, or dusting the connecting link to intent.
     "I've  already told you the  story of how the nagual Julian took  me to
his house after I was shot and tended my wound  until I recovered," don Juan
continued. "But I didn't tell you how he dusted my link, how he taught me to
stalk myself.
     "The first thing a nagual  does with  his prospective  apprentice is to
trick him.  That is,  he gives  him a jolt  on his  connecting link  to  the
spirit.  There  are  two ways of  doing  this.  One  is  through  seminormal
channels, which  I  used with you,  and  the  other is  by means of outright
sorcery, which my benefactor used on me."
     Don Juan again told  me the story of how his  benefactor  had convinced
the people who  had gathered at the road  that the wounded  man was his son.
Then he had paid some men to carry don Juan, unconscious from shock and loss
of blood, to  his own house. Don  Juan  woke there, days later,  and found a
kind old man and his fat wife tending his wound.
     The old man  said his name was Belisario and that his wife was a famous
healer and  that both  of them were healing his wound. Don Juan told them he
had no  money, and Belisario suggested  that when he  recovered,  payment of
some sort could be arranged.
     Don Juan said that he was thoroughly confused, which was nothing new to
him. He  was just  a muscular,  reckless  twenty-year-old  Indian,  with  no
brains, no formal education, and a terrible temper. He had no  conception of
gratitude. He thought it was  very kind of the old man  and his wife to have
helped him,  but his  intention was to wait  for his wound to heal and  then
simply vanish in the middle of the night.
     When he had recovered enough and was ready to flee,  old Belisario took
him  into  a room and in trembling whispers  disclosed  that the house where
they were  staying belonged to a monstrous  man  who was holding him and his
wife  prisoner. He asked don Juan to help  them  to regain their freedom, to
escape  from their captor  and tormentor.  Before don Juan  could  reply,  a
monstrous fish-faced man right out of a horror tale burst into the  room, as
if he had been listening behind the door. He was greenish-gray, had only one
unblinking eye in  the middle of his forehead, and was  as big as a door. He
lurched at don Juan, hissing like  a serpent, ready to  tear him apart,  and
frightened him so greatly that he fainted.
     "His way of giving me a jolt on my connecting link  with the spirit was
masterful." Don Juan laughed. "My benefactor, of course, had shifted me into
heightened  awareness  prior  to the  monster's  entrance, so  that  what  I
actually saw as a  monstrous man was what sorcerers call an inorganic being,
a formless energy field."
     Don Juan said  that he  knew countless  cases in which his benefactor's
devilishness  created  hilariously  embarrassing  situations   for  all  his
apprentices,  especially  for  don  Juan  himself,  whose   seriousness  and
stiffness made him  the perfect subject for his benefactor's didactic jokes.
He added as an  afterthought that  it went  without saying that  these jokes
entertained his benefactor immensely.
     "If you think I laugh at you - which  I do - it's nothing compared with
how  he  laughed  at  me," don Juan continued.  "My  devilish benefactor had
learned to weep to hide his laughter. You just can't  imagine how he used to
cry when I first began my apprenticeship."
     Continuing with his story,  don Juan stated that his life was never the
same after the shock of seeing that monstrous man.  His benefactor made sure
of  it. Don Juan explained that once a nagual has introduced his prospective
disciple,  especially  his nagual disciple, to trickery he  must struggle to
assure his  compliance. This  compliance could  be of  two different  kinds.
Either  the prospective disciple  is  so disciplined and tuned that only his
decision to  join  the nagual  is  needed, as had  been the  case with young
Talfa. Or the prospective disciple is  someone with little or no discipline,
in  which case  a  nagual has to  expend time and a great deal of  labor  to
convince his disciple.
     In don  Juan's  case, because he was  a wild young  peasant  without  a
thought in his head, the process of reeling him in took bizarre turns.
     Soon  after  the first jolt, his benefactor  gave  him a second one  by
showing don Juan his  ability  to transform himself.  One day his benefactor
became  a  young  man.  Don  Juan  was  incapable   of  conceiving  of  this
transformation as anything but an example  of a consummate actor's art. "How
did he accomplish those  changes?" I asked. "He  was both a magician  and an
artist," don  Juan replied.  "His  magic was that he transformed  himself by
moving his assemblage  point into the  position that would bring on whatever
particular  change  he desired.  And  his  art  was  the perfection  of  his
transformations."
     "I don't  quite understand what you're  telling me," I  said.  Don Juan
said that  perception is the hinge for everything man  is or does,  and that
perception is  ruled by the  location of the assemblage point. Therefore, if
that  point  changes  positions,  man's  perception  of  the  world  changes
accordingly. The  sorcerer who knew  exactly where to  place  his assemblage
point could become anything he wanted.
     "The nagual Julian's proficiency in moving his  assemblage point was so
magnificent that  he  could elicit the subtlest  transformations,"  don Juan
continued. "When a sorcerer becomes a crow, for instance, it is definitely a
great  accomplishment. But it entails a vast and therefore a gross  shift of
the assemblage point. However, moving it to the position of a fat man, or an
old  man, requires the minutest  shift  and the  keenest knowledge  of human
nature."
     "I'd rather avoid thinking or  talking  about those things as facts," I
said.
     Don Juan laughed as if I had said the funniest thing imaginable.
     "Was  there a reason for  your benefactor's transformations?"  I asked.
"Or was he just amusing himself?"
     "Don't be stupid. Warriors don't do anything just to amuse themselves,"
he  replied. "His  transformations were  strategical.  They were dictated by
need, like his transformation from  old  to young.  Now and then there  were
funny consequences, but that's another matter."
     I reminded him that I had asked before how his benefactor learned those
transformations. He had told me then that his  benefactor had a teacher, but
would not tell me who.
     "That  very  mysterious  sorcerer who is our ward taught him," don Juan
replied curtly.
     "What mysterious sorcerer is that?" I asked.
     "The death defier," he said and looked at me questioningly.
     For all the sorcerers of don Juan's party the death defier  was a  most
vivid character.  According  to  them,  the death defier was  a  sorcerer of
ancient  times.  He  had  succeeded  in  surviving  to  the  present  day by
manipulating  his  assemblage  point, making  it move  in specific  ways  to
specific  locations  within  his  total energy  field.  Such  maneuvers  had
permitted his awareness and life force to persist.
     Don Juan  had told me about the agreement that the seers of his lineage
had entered  into with the death defier centuries before.  He made  gifts to
them  in  exchange  for  vital  energy.  Because  of  this  agreement,  they
considered him their ward and called him "the tenant."
     Don Juan had explained that  sorcerers of ancient times were expert  at
making  the  assemblage  point  move.  In  doing  so  they   had  discovered
extraordinary things about perception, but they had also discovered how easy
it was to get lost  in aberration. The death  defier's situation was for don
Juan a classic example of an aberration.
     Don Juan  used to repeat every chance he could that if  the  assemblage
point was pushed by someone who not  only saw it but also  had enough energy
to  move it,  it slid, within  the  luminous ball,  to whatever location the
pusher directed. Its brilliance was enough to light up the threadlike energy
fields it touched. The resulting perception of the world was as complete as,
but  not the  same as, our normal perception  of  everyday  life, therefore,
sobriety was crucial to dealing with the moving of the assemblage point.
     Continuing his story, don  Juan  said that he quickly became accustomed
to thinking of the old man  who had  saved  his life as  really a young  man
masquerading as old. But one  day  the young man was again the old Belisario
don Juan  had  first  met. He and  the woman don Juan  thought was  his wife
packed their bags, and two smiling men with a  team of mules appeared out of
nowhere.
     Don Juan laughed, savoring his story.  He said that while the muleteers
packed the mules, Belisario pulled him aside and pointed out that he and his
wife were again disguised.
     He  was  again an old man, and  his beautiful wife  was a fat irascible
Indian.
     "I was so young and stupid that only the obvious had value for me," don
Juan continued. "Just a couple of days  before,  I had  seen his  incredible
transformation from a feeble man in his seventies to a vigorous young man in
his mid-twenties, and  I took his word that old age was just a disguise. His
wife had also changed  from a sour, fat Indian to a beautiful  slender young
woman.  The  woman,  of  course,  hadn't  transformed  herself  the  way  my
benefactor had.  He had  simply changed the woman.  Of  course, I could have
seen everything at that time, but wisdom always comes to us painfully and in
driblets."
     Don Juan said that  the old man assured him  that his wound  was healed
although he did not feel quite  well yet. He then embraced don Juan and in a
truly sad voice whispered, "the  monster has liked you  so much that he  has
released me and my wife from bondage and taken you as his sole servant."
     "I would have laughed at him," don Juan went on, "had it not been for a
deep animal growling and  a frightening  rattle that came from the monster's
rooms."
     Don Juan's eyes  were shining  with inner delight. I  wanted  to remain
serious, but could not help laughing.
     Belisario,  aware of don  Juan's  fright, apologized profusely for  the
twist of fate that had liberated him and imprisoned don Juan. He clicked his
tongue in  disgust and cursed  the monster. He had tears in his eyes when he
listed  all  the  chores the monster wanted  done daily. And  when don  Juan
protested,  he  confided, in  low  tones, that there  was no way  to escape,
because the monster's knowledge of witchcraft was unequaled.
     Don  Juan  asked Belisario  to  recommend  some  line  of  action.  And
Belisario  went  into  a  long  explanation  about  plans  of  action  being
appropriate only if one were dealing with average human beings. In the human
context, we can  plan and plot and, depending on luck,  plus our cunning and
dedication, can  succeed. But  in  the face of the unknown, specifically don
Juan's situation, the only hope of survival was to acquiesce and understand.
     Belisario confessed to don Juan in a barely audible murmur that to make
sure the monster never came after  him, he was going to the state of Durango
to learn sorcery. He  asked don Juan if  he,  too,  would consider  learning
sorcery.  And don  Juan, horrified at the thought,  said that he would  have
nothing to do with witches.
     Don Juan held his sides laughing and admitted that  he enjoyed thinking
about how his benefactor must have relished their interplay. Especially when
he  himself, in  a  frenzy  of  fear and passion,  rejected  the  bona  fide
invitation to learn sorcery, saying, "I am an Indian. I was born to hate and
fear witches."
     Belisario exchanged looks with his wife and his body began to convulse.
Don Juan realized he was  weeping silently, obviously hurt by the rejection.
His wife had to prop him up until he regained his composure.
     As  Belisario and  his wife were walking away,  he turned and gave  don
Juan one more piece of advice. He  said that the monster abhorred women, and
don Juan should be  on the lookout for a male replacement on the  off chance
that  the monster would like him enough to switch slaves. But  he should not
raise his hopes, because it was going to be years before he could even leave
the house. The  monster liked to make sure his slaves were loyal or at least
obedient. Don Juan could  stand it no longer. He broke  down, began to weep,
and  told Belisario that no one  was  going  to enslave him. He could always
kill  himself.  The  old  man  was very moved by  don  Juan's  outburst  and
confessed that he had had the same idea, but,  alas, the monster was able to
read his thoughts and had prevented him from taking his own life  every time
he had tried.
     Belisario  made another offer  to take  don Juan with him to Durango to
learn sorcery. He said it was the only  possible solution. And don Juan told
him his solution was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
     Belisario began to weep loudly  and  embraced don Juan.  He  cursed the
moment he had saved the other man's life and swore that he  had no idea they
would trade places. He blew his nose, and  looking  at don Juan with burning
eyes,  said,  "Disguise is  the only  way to  survive.  If you  don't behave
properly, the  monster can steal your soul and turn you  into  an idiot  who
does  his chores, and nothing  more. Too bad I don't have  time to teach you
acting." Then he wept even more.
     Don  Juan,  choking  with  tears  asked  him to describe  how  he could
disguise himself. Belisario confided that the monster had terrible eyesight,
and recommended that don Juan experiment with  various  clothes  that suited
his fancy. He had, after all, years ahead of him to try different disguises.
He embraced don  Juan at the door,  weeping  openly.  His wife  touched  don
Juan's hand shyly. And then they were gone.
     "Never  in my  life,  before or  after,  have  I  felt such  terror and
despair," don Juan said. "The monster rattled  things inside the house as if
he were waiting impatiently for me. I sat down by the door and whined like a
dog in pain. Then I vomited from sheer fear."
     Don Juan sat for hours incapable of moving. He dared not leave, nor did
he dare go inside.  It was no exaggeration to say that he was actually about
to  die when he  saw Belisario waving his arms,  frantically trying to catch
his
     attention from the other side of the street. Just seeing him again gave
don  Juan instantaneous  relief.  Belisario  was  squatting  by the sidewalk
watching the house. He signaled don Juan to stay put.
     After an excruciatingly long time, Belisario crawled a few  feet on his
hands  and  knees  toward don Juan,  then squatted again, totally  immobile.
Crawling in that fashion, he  advanced  until he was  at don Juan's side. It
took him hours. A lot  of people had passed  by, but  no one  seemed to have
noticed  don Juan's despair or the  old  man's actions. When the two of them
were side by side, Belisario whispered that  he  had not  felt right leaving
don  Juan like a dog  tied  to  a post. His  wife had objected,  but he  had
returned to attempt to rescue him. After all, it was thanks to don Juan that
he had gained his freedom.
     He asked  don Juan in a commanding whisper  whether  he was  ready  and
willing to  do anything  to  escape this.  And don Juan assured him  that he
would do  anything. In the most  surreptitious  manner, Belisario handed don
Juan  a bundle of clothes. Then he outlined his plan. Don Juan was to  go to
the area of the house  farthest from  the monster's rooms and slowly  change
his clothes, taking off one  item of clothing  at a  time, starting with his
hat, leaving the shoes for last.  Then he was  to put all his  clothes on  a
wooden frame, a mannequin-like structure  he was  to  build, efficiently and
quickly, as soon as he was inside the house. The  next step  of the plan was
for don  Juan to put on the only  disguise that could fool the monster:  the
clothes in the
     bundle.
     Don Juan  ran  into the  house  and  got  everything  ready. He built a
scarecrow-like frame with poles he found in the back of the house,  took off
his clothes and put them on it. But when  he opened  the  bundle he  got the
surprise of his life. The bundle consisted of women's clothes!
     "I felt stupid and lost," don  Juan said, "and was just about to put my
own clothes back on when I heard the inhuman growls of that monstrous man. I
had been reared to despise women, to believe their only function was to take
care of  men. Putting on women's clothes  to me was tantamount to becoming a
woman. But my fear of the monster  was so intense that I closed my eyes  and
put on the damned clothes."
     I looked at don Juan, imagining him in women's clothes. It was an image
so utterly ridiculous that against my will I broke into a belly laugh.
     Don  Juan  said that when  old  Belisario, waiting  for him  across the
street, saw don Juan in disguise, he  began to weep uncontrollably. Weeping,
he guided don Juan to the outskirts of town where his wife was waiting  with
the  two  muleteers. One of  them very daringly  asked Belisario  if  he was
stealing the weird girl to sell her to  a  whorehouse. The  old man wept  so
hard  he seemed on the verge of fainting. 'he young muleteers did  not  know
what to do, but Belisario's wife,  instead of commiserating, began to scream
with laughter. And don Juan could not understand why.
     The party began to move in the dark. They took little-t raveled  trails
and  moved steadily  north.  Belisario did not  speak  much. He seemed to be
frightened and expecting  trouble. His wife fought with him all the time and
complained that they had thrown away their chance for  freedom by taking don
Juan  along. Belisario gave  her strict  orders not to mention it  again for
fear  the muleteers would  discover  that  don  Juan  was  in  disguise.  He
cautioned don Juan that because he did not know how  to  behave convincingly
like a woman, he should act as if he were a girl who was a little touched in
the head.
     Within  a few days  don Juan's fear subsided a great deal. In fact,  he
became so confident that he could not even
     remember having been afraid. If it had not been for the clothes he  was
wearing, he could have imagined the whole experience had been a bad dream.
     Wearing women's clothes under  those conditions, entailed, of course, a
series of drastic  changes. Belisario's  wife  coached  don Juan,  with true
seriousness, in  every  aspect of being a woman.  Don  Juan helped her cook,
wash  clothes,  gather firewood. Belisario shaved don Juan's head  and put a
strong-smelling medicine on it, and told the muleteers that the girl had had
an  infestation of lice.  Don Juan  said that since he was still a beardless
youth it was not really difficult to pass as a woman. But he  felt disgusted
with himself, and  with all  those people, and, above all, with his fate. To
end  up  wearing women's  clothes and doing  women's chores was more than he
could bear.
     One day  he  had  enough.  The  muleteers were the  final  straw.  They
expected and demanded that this strange girl wait on them hand and foot. Don
Juan said that he also had to be on permanent guard, because they would make
passes.
     I felt compelled to ask a question.
     "Were the muleteers in cahoots with your benefactor? I asked. .
     "No," he  replied and began to laugh uproariously. "They  were just two
nice  people who had fallen temporarily  under his spell. He had hired their
mules to carry medicinal plants and told  them  that he would pay handsomely
if they would help him kidnap a young woman."
     The scope  of  the nagual Julian's actions staggered my  imagination. I
pictured don Juan fending off sexual advances and hollered with laughter.
     Don  Juan  continued  his  account. He said that he told  the  old  man
sternly  that the masquerade  had lasted  long  enough, the  men were making
sexual   advances.   Belisario   nonchalantly  advised   him  to   be   more
understanding,  because men will be men, and began to weep again, completely
baffling don Juan, who found himself furiously defending women.
     He was so passionate about the plight of women  that he scared himself.
He told  Belisario that he  was going to end up in worse shape than he would
have, had he stayed as the monster's slave.
     Don  Juan's turmoil increased when the old man wept  uncontrollably and
mumbled inanities: life was sweet,  the little price one had to  pay  for it
was a joke, the  monster would devour don Juan's soul and not even allow him
to  kill  himself.  "Flirt with  the  muleteers,"  he advised  don Juan in a
conciliatory tone and manner. "They are primitive peasants. All they want is
to play, so push them back when  they  shove  you. Let them touch  your leg.
What do you care?" And again, he wept unrestrainedly. Don Juan asked him why
he  wept  like that. "Because you are perfect for all this," he said and his
body twisted with the force of his sobbing.
     Don Juan thanked  him for his good feelings and for  all the trouble he
was taking on his account. He told Belisario  he now felt safe and wanted to
leave.
     "The  art  of stalking  is learning all the  quirks of  your disguise,"
Belisario said, paying no attention to what don  Juan was telling  him. "And
it is to learn them so well no one will know you are disguised. For that you
need to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet."
     Don  Juan had no  idea what  Belisario  was  talking about. Rather than
finding  out,  he asked him for  some  men's  clothes.  Belisario  was  very
understanding. He gave  don  Juan some  old  clothes  and  a  few pesos.  He
promised don Juan that his disguise would  always be there in case he needed
it, and pressed him vehemently to come to Durango with  him to learn sorcery
and  free  himself from the monster for good. Don  Juan said no  and thanked
him. So Belisario bid  him goodbye and patted him on the back repeatedly and
with considerable force.
     Don Juan changed  his clothes and asked  Belisario for  directions.  He
answered that if don Juan followed the trail north, sooner or later he would
reach  the next town. He said that the two  of them might  even  cross paths
again since they  were all going in the same general  direction -  away from
the monster.
     Don  Juan took  off as fast as he could,  free  at last.  He  must have
walked four or five  miles before  he found signs of people. He knew that  a
town was nearby and thought  that  perhaps he could get  work there until he
decided where he was going. He sat  down to rest for  a moment, anticipating
the normal difficulties a stranger  would  find  in  a small  out-of-the-way
town, when from the corner of his eye he saw a movement in the bushes by the
mule  trail.  He  felt  someone  was watching him.  He became so  thoroughly
terrified that he jumped up and started to run in the direction of the town;
the monster jumped at him  lurching  out to  grab his neck. He missed by  an
inch.  Don  Juan screamed  as  he  had never screamed before, but  still had
enough self-control to turn and run back in the direction from which he
     had come.
     While don  Juan  ran  for his life, the  monster pursued him,  crashing
through the bushes only a few feet away. Don  Juan said that it was the most
frightening sound he had ever heard. Finally he saw the mules moving  slowly
in the distance, and he yelled for help.
     Belisario recognized  don  Juan  and ran  toward  him  displaying overt
terror.  He threw the bundle of  women's clothes at  don Juan shouting, "Run
like a woman, you fool."
     Don Juan admitted that he did not know how he had  the presence of mind
to run like  a woman,  but he did  it.  The monster stopped chasing him. And
Belisario told him to change quickly while he held the monster at bay.
     Don Juan  joined  Belisario's wife  and  the smiling  muleteers without
looking at  anybody. They doubled back and took other  trails.  Nobody spoke
for  days; then Belisario  gave  him daily  lessons. He  told  don Juan that
Indian women were practical  and went  directly to the heart of  things, but
that  they were  also very  shy,  and that when challenged  they  showed the
physical signs  of  fright  in  shifty  eyes,  tight  mouths,  and  enlarged
nostrils. All  these  signs  were  accompanied  by  a  fearful stubbornness,
followed by shy laughter.
     He  made don  Juan practice his womanly  behavior skills in every  town
they passed through. And don Juan honestly believed he  was teaching him  to
be  an actor.  But Belisario  insisted that he  was teaching him  the art of
stalking.  He  told  don  Juan  that  stalking  was  an  art  applicable  to
everything, and that there were  four  steps to learning  it:  ruthlessness,
cunning, patience, and sweetness.
     I felt compelled to interrupt his account once more.
     "But isn't stalking taught in deep, heightened awareness?" I asked.
     "Of  course," he replied with a grin. "But you have to  understand that
for some men wearing women's clothes is the door into  heightened awareness.
In  fact, such  means are more  effective than pushing the assemblage point,
but are very difficult to arrange."
     Don Juan said  that his benefactor drilled him  daily in the four moods
of stalking and insisted that don Juan  understand  that ruthlessness should
not  be harshness, cunning should not be  cruelty,  patience  should not  be
negligence, and sweetness should not be foolishness.
     He taught him that  these four steps had to be practiced and  perfected
until they were so  smooth they were unnoticeable.  He believed women  to be
natural stalkers. And his conviction was so  strong  he maintained that only
in a woman's disguise could any man really learn the art of stalking.
     "I went with  him to  every market in every town we  passed and haggled
with  everyone," don Juan went on.  "My benefactor used to  stay to one side
watching me. 'Be ruthless but charming,' he  used to  say.  'Be cunning  but
nice. Be patient but active. Be sweet but lethal. Only women can do it. If a
man acts this way he's being prissy.' "
     And as if to make sure  don Juan stayed  in  line,  the  monstrous  man
appeared from  time  to  time. Don  Juan  caught  sight of him,  roaming the
countryside. He would see him most often after Belisario gave him a vigorous
back massage,  supposedly to alleviate a sharp nervous pain in his neck. Don
Juan laughed and  said  that  he had no idea he was  being  manipulated into
heightened awareness.
     "It took us one month to reach the city of Durango," don Juan said. "In
that  month, I  had a brief  sample of the four moods of stalking. It really
didn't change me much,  but it gave me a chance to have an inkling  of  what
being a woman was like."

     The Four Moods Of Stalking

     Don  Juan said that I should sit there at that ancient lookout post and
use  the pull of the  earth  to  move  my assemblage point and  recall other
states of heightened awareness in which he had taught me stalking.
     "In the past few days, I have  mentioned many times the  four moods  of
stalking,"  he went  on.  "I have mentioned ruthlessness, cunning, patience,
and sweetness, with the hope that you might remember what I taught you about
them. It would be wonderful if you could use these  four moods as the ushers
to bring you into a total recollection."
     He kept quiet for what seemed an inordinately long moment. Then he made
a statement which  should  not have surprised me,  but did. He  said  he had
taught  me  the four moods of  stalking in northern Mexico with the help  of
Vicerite  Medrano  and Silvio  Manuel.  He  did not elaborate  but  let  his
statement sink  in. I  tried to remember but finally gave  up  and wanted to
shout that I could not remember something that never happened.
     As  I  was  struggling  to voice my protest, anxious thoughts began  to
cross my mind. I knew don Juan had not said what he had just to annoy me. As
I  always  did  when  asked  to  remember  heightened  awareness,  I  became
obsessively conscious  that there  was really no continuity to the  events I
had experienced under his guidance. Those events were not strung together as
the events in  my  daily  life were, in a linear sequence.  It was perfectly
possible he was right. In don  Juan's world, I had no business being certain
of anything.
     I  tried to voice my doubts but he  refused to listen and urged  me  to
recollect.  .By then it was quite dark. It had gotten  windy, but  I did not
feel the cold. Don Juan had given me a flat  rock to place on my sternum. My
awareness  was  keenly tuned to  everything around. I  felt  an abrupt pull,
which was neither  external  nor  internal,  but rather  the sensation  of a
sustained  tugging at an unidentifiable part of myself.  Suddenly I began to
remember  with  shattering  clarity  a meeting  I  had had  years before.  I
remembered  events and people so vividly that it  frightened  me. I  felt  a
chill.
     I told all this to don Juan,  who did not seem impressed or  concerned.
He urged me not to give  in to. mental or physical fear. My recollection was
so phenomenal that  it was as if I  were reliving  the experience. Don  Juan
kept quiet.  He  did not even  look at me. I felt numbed.  The  sensation of
numbness passed slowly.
     I repeated the same things I always said to don  Juan when I remembered
an event with no linear existence.
     "How can this be, don Juan? How could I have forgotten all this?"
     And he reaffirmed the same things he always did.
     "This type of remembering or forgetting has  nothing to  do with normal
memory," he assured  me. "It  has to do with  the movement of the assemblage
point."
     He affirmed  that although  I possessed total knowledge of  what intent
is, I did not command that knowledge yet. Knowing what intent is  means that
one  can, at any time, explain that knowledge  or  use it. A  nagual by  the
force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner.
     "What did you recollect?" he asked me.
     "The first time you told me about the four moods of stalking," I said.
     Some process, inexplicable in terms of my usual awareness of the world,
had  released  a  memory  which  a minute  before  had  not  existed.  And I
recollected  an  entire  sequence  of  events that had  happened many  years
before.
     Just as I was leaving  don Juan's house in Sonora, he had asked  me  to
meet him the following week around noon, across the U.S. border, in Nogales,
Arizona, in the Greyhound bus depot.
     I arrived about  an  hour early. He was standing by the door. I greeted
him. He  did not answer  but hurriedly pulled me aside and  whispered that I
should take  my hands out of my pockets. I was dumbfounded. He  did not give
me  time to respond, but said that  my  fly  was open, and it was shamefully
evident that I was sexually aroused.
     The speed with which I  rushed to cover myself was  phenomenal.  By the
time I  realized it  was a  crude joke we were  on the street. Don  Juan was
laughing, slapping me on the back  repeatedly and forcefully, as  if he were
just celebrating the joke.  Suddenly I found myself in a state of heightened
awareness.
     We  walked  into a coffee shop and  sat down.  My mind was so  clear  I
wanted to look at everything, see the essence of things.
     "Don't waste  energy!" don  Juan commanded in a stern voice. "I brought
you  here to discover if  you can eat when your assemblage  point has moved.
Don't try to do more than that."
     But then  a  man  sat  down at  the table  in  front of  me, and all my
attention became trapped by him.
     "Move your eyes in  circles,"  don Juan commanded. "Don't look at  that
man."
     I found it impossible to stop watching the man. I felt irritated by don
Juan's demands.
     "What do you see?" I heard don Juan ask.
     I  was seeing a  luminous cocoon made  of  transparent wings which were
folded over the cocoon itself. The wings unfolded, fluttered for an instant,
peeled off, fell, and were replaced by  new wings, which  repeated  the same
process.
     Don Juan boldly turned my chair until I was facing the wall.
     "What a waste," he said in a loud sigh, after  I  described what  I had
seen. "You have exhausted nearly all your
     energy. Restrain yourself. A warrior needs  focus.  Who  gives  a  damn
about wings on a luminous cocoon?"
     He said that heightened  awareness was like a springboard.  From it one
could  jump  into  infinity.  He  stressed, over  and over,  that  when  the
assemblage point was dislodged, it either became lodged again at a  position
very near its customary one or continued moving on into infinity.
     "People have  no idea of the  strange power we carry within ourselves,"
he went  on.  "At this  moment, for  instance, you have the means  to  reach
infinity. If you  continue with  your needless behavior, you may  succeed in
pushing  your assemblage point  beyond a certain threshold, from which there
is no return."
     I understood the peril he was talking about, or rather I had the bodily
sensation that I was standing on the brink of an abyss, and that if I leaned
forward I would fall into it.
     "Your  assemblage point moved  to heightened awareness," he  continued,
"because I have lent you my energy."
     We ate in silence, very simple food. Don Juan did not allow me to drink
coffee or tea.
     "While you are using my energy," he said, "you're not in your own time.
You are in mine. I drink water."
     As we were  walking back  to my car I felt  a bit nauseous. I staggered
and almost lost my (balance. It was a  sensation similar  to that of walking
while wearing glasses for the first time.
     "Get hold of  yourself,"  don Juan said,  smiling.  "Where we're going,
you'll need to be extremely precise."
     He told me to drive  across the international border into the twin city
of Nogales, Mexico. While I was driving, he gave me directions: which street
to take, when to make right or left hand turns, how fast to go.
     "I know this area," I said quite peeved. "Tell me where you want to  go
and I'll take you there. Like a taxi driver."
     "O.K.," he said. "Take me to 1573 Heavenward Avenue."
     I did not  know  Heavenward Avenue, or if such a street really existed.
In fact, I had the suspicion he had just concocted a name to embarrass me. I
kept silent. There was a mocking glint in his shiny eyes.
     "Egomania  is a  real  tyrant,"  he said.  "We must work ceaselessly to
dethrone it."
     He continued  to tell me  how to drive.  Finally he asked me to stop in
front  of  a one-story, light-beige  house on a corner  lot, in a well-to-do
neighborhood.
     There was  something  about the house that immediately caught my eye: a
thick layer of ocher gravel all around it. The solid street door, the window
sashes, and the house trim were all painted  ocher, like the gravel. All the
visible windows  had closed  Venetian  blinds.  To all appearances it was  a
typical suburban middle-class dwelling.
     We got out of the car. Don Juan  led the way. He did not knock  or open
the  door  with a key,  but when  we got  to it, the door opened silently on
oiled hinges - all by itself, as far as I could detect.
     Don Juan quickly entered. He did not invite me in. I just followed him.
I was curious to see who had opened the door from the inside, but there  was
no one there.
     The interior of the house was very  soothing. There were no pictures on
the  smooth,  scrupulously clean walls. There were no lamps or book  shelves
either. A golden  yellow  tile floor  contrasted  most  pleasingly  with the
off-white color of the walls. We were in a small and narrow hall that opened
into a spacious living room with a  high ceiling and a brick fireplace. Half
the room was completely empty, but next to the fireplace was a semicircle of
expensive furniture: two large beige couches  in the  middle, flanked by two
armchairs covered in fabric  of  the same color.  There was a  heavy, round,
solid oak coffee table in the center. Judging from what  I was seeing around
the house, the people who lived  there appeared to be well off,  but frugal.
And they obviously liked to sit around the fire.
     Two men, perhaps in their mid-fifties, sat in the armchairs. They stood
when we entered. One of them  was Indian, the other Latin American. Don Juan
introduced me first to the Indian, who was nearer to me.
     "This is Silvio  Manuel," don Juan said to  me. "He's the most powerful
and dangerous sorcerer of my party, and the most mysterious too."
     Silvio Manuel's features were out of a Mayan fresco. His complexion was
pale, almost yellow. I thought he looked Chinese. His eyes were slanted, but
without  the epicanthic fold. They  were big,  black, and  brilliant. He was
beardless. His hair was  jet-black with  specks  of gray in it. He  had high
cheekbones and full lips. He was perhaps five feet seven, thin, wiry, and he
wore a  yellow sport shirt, brown slacks,  and a thin  beige jacket. Judging
from his clothes and general mannerisms, he seemed to be Mexican-American.
     I smiled and extended my hand to Silvio Manuel, but he did not take it.
He nodded perfunctorily.
     "And this is Vicente Medrano," don Juan said, turning to the other man.
"He's the most knowledgeable and the oldest  of my  companions. He is oldest
not in terms of age, but because he was my benefactor's first disciple."
     Vicente nodded just as perfunctorily as Silvio Manuel had, and also did
not say a word.
     He was a  bit taller  than Silvio Manuel,  but  just as  lean. He had a
pinkish complexion and  a  neatly trimmed  beard and  mustache. His features
were almost delicate: a thin, beautifully chiseled nose, a small mouth, thin
lips. Bushy,  dark eyebrows contrasted with his graying beard and hair.  His
eyes  were brown  and also brilliant and  laughed in  spite of  his frowning
expression.
     He  was  conservatively  dressed  in  a  greenish  seersucker  suit and
open-collared sport  shirt.  He too seemed to be Mexican-American. I guessed
him to be the owner of the house.
     In  contrast,  don Juan looked  like an Indian peon. His straw hat, his
worn-out shoes, his old khaki pants and plaid shirt were those of a gardener
or a handyman.
     The impression I had, upon seeing all three of them together,  was that
don  Juan was in disguise. The military  image came  to me that don Juan was
the commanding officer of a clandestine operation, an officer who, no matter
how hard he tried, could not hide his years of command.
     I also had the feeling that  they must all  have been  around the  same
age, although  don Juan  looked much older than  the other  two, yet  seemed
infinitely stronger.
     "I think you already know that Carlos is by far the biggest indulger  I
have ever met," don Juan told  them with a most serious  expression. "Bigger
even  than our benefactor. I assure  you that if there is  someone who takes
indulging seriously, this is the man."
     I laughed, but  no one else did. The two men observed me with a strange
glint in their eyes.
     "For  sure you'll  make  a  memorable  trio," don  Juan continued. "The
oldest and most knowledgeable, the most dangerous and powerful, and the most
self-indulgent."
     They  still   did  not  laugh.  They  scrutinized  me  until  I  became
self-conscious. Then Vicente broke the silence.
     "I don't know why you brought  him inside the house," he said in a dry,
cutting tone. "He's of little use to us. Put him out in the backyard."
     "And tie him,"  Silvio Manuel  added. Don Juan turned to me. "Come on,"
he said in a soft voice and pointed  with a quick sideways  movement of  his
head to the back of the house.
     It was more than obvious that the two  men did not  like  me. I did not
know what to say. I was  definitely angry and hurt, but  those feelings were
somehow deflected by my state of heightened awareness.
     We walked into the backyard. Don Juan casually picked up a leather rope
and twirled it around my neck with tremendous  speed. His movements  were so
fast and so nimble  that an instant  later, before I could  realize what was
happening,  I  was  tied  at  the neck, like  a  dog,  to  one  of  the  two
cinder-block columns supporting the heavy roof over the back porch.
     Don Juan  shook his head  from side to side in a gesture of resignation
or disbelief and went back into the house as I began to yell at him to untie
me.  The rope was so tight around my  neck it prevented me from screaming as
loud as I would have liked.
     I could not believe what was taking place. Containing my anger, I tried
to undo the knot at  my neck. It was so compact  that  the  leather  strands
seemed glued together. I hurt my nails trying to pull them apart.
     I  had  an  attack of uncontrollable wrath and growled like an impotent
animal. Then I grabbed the  rope, twisted it around my forearms, and bracing
my feet  against the  cinder-block column, pulled. But the  leather was  too
tough  for  the  strength of  my muscles. I felt humiliated and scared. Fear
brought me a  moment of sobriety. I knew I had let don Juan's false  aura of
reasonableness deceive me. I assessed my situation as objectively as I could
and saw no  way to escape except  by cutting the leather rope. I frantically
began to rub it against the sharp corner of the
     cinder-block column. I thought that if I could rip  the rope before any
of the men came to the back, I had a chance to run to  my  car and take off,
never to return.
     I  puffed and sweated and  rubbed the rope until I  had nearly  worn it
through. Then I braced  one foot against the column, wrapped the rope around
my forearms again,  and pulled it desperately until it snapped, throwing  me
back into the house.
     As  I crashed  backward through  the open door, don Juan,  Vicente, and
Silvio Manuel were standing in the middle of the room, applauding.
     "What a dramatic reentry," Vicente said, helping me up. "You fooled me.
I didn't think you were capable of such explosions."
     Don Juan came to me and snapped the knot open, freeing my neck from the
piece of rope around it.
     I was shaking with fear, exertion, and  anger. In a faltering  voice, I
asked don Juan why he was tormenting me like this. The three of them laughed
and at that moment seemed the farthest thing from threatening.
     "We wanted to test you and find out what sort of a man you really are,"
don Juan said.
     He led me to one of the couches and politely offered me n seat. Vicente
and Silvio Manuel sat in the  armchairs, don Juan sat facing me on the other
couch.
     I laughed nervously but was no longer apprehensive about my  situation,
nor  about don  Juan  and  his friends. All "three  regarded  me  with frank
curiosity. Vicente could not stop smiling,  although he seemed to  be trying
desperately to appear serious. Silvio Manuel shook  his head rhythmically as
he stared at me. His eyes were unfocused but fixed on me.
     "We tied you  down,"  don  Juan  went  on, "because  we wanted to  know
whether you are sweet or patient or ruthless or cunning.  We  found  out you
are none of those things. Rather you're a king-sized indulger, just as I had
said.
     "If you hadn't  indulged  in being violent,  you  would  certainly have
noticed that the formidable knot in the rope around your neck was a fake. It
snaps. Vicente designed that knot to fool his friends."
     "You tore  the  rope  violently. You're  certainly not  sweet,"  Silvio
Manuel said.
     They were all quiet for a moment, then began to laugh.
     "You're neither ruthless nor cunning," don Juan went  on. "If you were,
you would easily have snapped open both  knots and  run away with a valuable
leather  rope. You're not patient either. If you were, you would have whined
and cried until you realized that there was  a pair of  clippers by the wall
with which you could have cut the rope in two seconds and saved yourself all
the agony and exertion.
     "You  can't be taught,  then, to  be violent or obtuse. You already are
that. But you can learn to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet."
     Don Juan explained  to  me  that  ruthlessness,  cunning, patience, and
sweetness  were the  essence of stalking. They were the basics that with all
their ramifications had to be taught in careful, meticulous steps.
     He was definitely  addressing me, but he talked looking  at Vicente and
Silvio  Manuel, who listened with utmost attention and shook their  heads in
agreement from time to time.
     He stressed repeatedly that  teaching  stalking was  one  of  the  most
difficult  things  sorcerers did. And he insisted that  no matter  what they
themselves did  to teach me stalking, and no matter what I  believed  to the
contrary, it was impeccability which  dictated their acts. "Rest assured  we
know what we're doing. Our benefactor, the  nagual Julian, saw  to it,"  don
Juan said, and all three of them broke into such uproarious laughter that  I
felt quite uncomfortable. I did not know what to think.
     Don Juan reiterated that  a very important point to consider  was that,
to an onlooker, the behavior  of  sorcerers might appear  malicious, when in
reality their behavior was always impeccable.
     "How can you tell the difference,  if you're  at the receiving end?"  I
asked.
     "Malicious  acts are performed by people  for personal  gain," he said.
"Sorcerers,  though, have  an ulterior purpose  for  their  acts,  which has
nothing to  do with personal gain. The fact that  they enjoy their acts does
not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average
man  acts only if there is the chance for profit. Warriors say  they act not
for profit but for the spirit."
     I thought  about it. Acting without considering gain was truly an alien
concept. I had been reared to invest and to hope for some kind of reward for
everything I did.
     Don Juan must have taken  my  silence and thoughtfulness as skepticism.
He laughed and looked at his two companions.
     "Take  the four  of us, as  an  example," he  went on. "You,  yourself,
believe that you're investing in this situation and eventually you are going
to profit from it. If you get angry with us,  or  if we disappoint you,  you
may resort to malicious acts to get even with us.  We, on the contrary, have
no  thought of  personal gain.  Our acts are dictated by impeccability  - we
can't be angry or disillusioned with you."
     Don Juan smiled and told me that from the  moment we had met at the bus
depot that  day,  everything he  had done to me, although it  might not have
seemed so, was dictated by impeccability. He explained that he needed to get
me
     into  an unguarded position  to help me enter  heightened awareness. It
was to that end that he had told me my fly was open.
     "It was  a way of  jolting you," he  said with  a  grin.  "We are crude
Indians, so all  our jolts are somehow primitive. The more sophisticated the
warrior, the greater his finesse and elaboration of his jolts. But I have to
admit we got a big kick out of our crudeness, especially when we tied you at
the neck like a dog."
     The three  of them  grinned and then laughed quietly  as  if there  was
someone else inside the house whom they did not want to disturb.
     In  a very low  voice  don Juan said that because  I was in a  state of
heightened awareness, I  could understand more readily what he was going  to
tell  me about the two masteries: stalking and  intent.  He called  them the
crowning glory of  sorcerers  old  and  new, the  very  thing sorcerers were
concerned with today, just as  sorcerers had been thousands of years before.
He asserted that stalking was the beginning, and that before  anything could
be attempted on the warrior's path, warriors must learn to  stalk; next they
must learn  to intend,  and only then could they move their assemblage point
at will.
     I  knew exactly what he was talking about. I knew, without knowing how,
what moving the assemblage point  could  accomplish. But I did not  have the
words to explain what I knew.  I tried repeatedly  to  voice my knowledge to
them. They laughed at my failures and coaxed me to try again.
     "How would you like  it if I articulate it for you?" don Juan asked. "I
might be able to find the very words you want to use but can't."
     From his look, I decided he was seriously asking my permission. I found
the situation so incongruous that I began to laugh.
     Don Juan,  displaying great patience, asked me again, and I got another
attack of laughter. Their  look of surprise and concern told  me my reaction
was incomprehensible to  them. Don Juan  got up and announced that I was too
tired and it was time for me to return to the world of ordinary affairs.
     "Wait, wait," I pleaded. "I am all right. I just find it funny that you
should be asking me to give you permission."
     "I  have  to  ask your  permission," don Juan said, "because you're the
only one who can allow the words pent  up inside you to be tapped. I think I
made the  mistake of assuming  you  understand more than  you  do. Words are
tremendously powerful and  important and are the magical property of whoever
has them.
     "Sorcerers  have  a  rule  of  thumb: they  say  that  the  deeper  the
assemblage point moves, the greater the  feeling that one has  knowledge and
no  words to explain it. Sometimes the assemblage point  of average  persons
can move without a known cause  and without their being aware of  it, except
that they become tongue-tied, confused, and evasive."
     Vicente  interrupted and suggested I stay with them a while longer. Don
Juan agreed and turned to face me.
     "The  very  first  principle of  stalking  is  that  a  warrior  stalks
himself," he said. "He stalks himself ruthlessly,  cunningly, patiently, and
sweetly."
     I  wanted to  laugh, but he  did not give  me time. Very succinctly  he
defined  stalking as the art of  using behavior in  novel ways for  specific
purposes. He said that normal  human behavior in the world  of everyday life
was routine.  Any behavior that broke from routine caused an  unusual effect
on our total being.  That unusual effect was what sorcerers  sought, because
it was cumulative.
     He explained  that  the sorcerer seers  of ancient times, through their
seeing, had  first noticed that unusual  behavior produced  a  tremor in the
assemblage  point.  They  soon  discovered  that  if  unusual  behavior  was
practiced systematically  and  directed wisely,  it  eventually  forced  the
assemblage point to move.
     "The real challenge  for those sorcerer seers," don Juan went on,  "was
finding a system of behavior that was neither petty nor capricious, but that
combined the morality and the sense of  beauty which differentiates sorcerer
seers from plain witches."
     He stopped talking, and they all looked at me as if searching for signs
of fatigue in my eyes or face.
     "Anyone  who succeeds in moving his assemblage point to  a new position
is a sorcerer," don  Juan continued. "And from that new position, he  can do
all  kinds of good  and bad things  to  his  fellow  men. Being  a sorcerer,
therefore, can be like  being a  cobbler or a baker.  The  quest of sorcerer
seers is  to go beyond  that stand. And to  do that,  they need morality and
beauty."
     He said  that  for  sorcerers  stalking  was  the  foundation on  which
everything else they did was built.
     "Some sorcerers object to the term stalking," he went on, "but the name
came about because it entails surreptitious behavior.
     "It's  also  called  the  art  of stealth,  but that  term  is  equally
unfortunate. We ourselves,  because  of our nonmilitant temperament, call it
the art of controlled folly. You can call it anything you wish. We, however,
will continue with the  term stalking since it's so easy to say stalker and,
as my benefactor used to say, so awkward to say controlled folly maker."
     At the mention of their benefactor, they laughed like children.
     I understood him perfectly. I had no questions or  doubts. If anything,
I had the feeling that I needed  to hold onto every word don Juan was saying
to anchor myself. Otherwise my thoughts would have run ahead of him. Х
     I noticed that my eyes  were  fixed  on the movement of his lips as  my
ears were fixed on the sound of his words. Hut once I realized this, I could
no  longer  follow  him.  My  concentration  was  broken. Don Juan continued
talking, but
     I  was   not  listening.  I  was  wondering  about   the  inconceivable
possibility of living  permanently in heightened awareness.  I asked  myself
what would the survival value  be? Would  one be able to  assess  situations
better? Be quicker than the average man, or perhaps more intelligent?
     Don Juan  suddenly  stopped  talking and asked  me what I  was thinking
about.
     "Ah, you're  so very practical," he commented  after I had told him  my
reveries. "I thought that in heightened awareness your temperament was going
to be more artistic, more mystical."
     Don Juan turned to Vicente and asked him to answer my question. Vicente
cleared his throat and dried his hands by rubbing  them against his  thighs.
He  gave the clear impression of  suffering from  stage fright. I felt sorry
for him.  My  thoughts began to spin.  And when I heard  him stammering,  an
image burst  into my  mind  -  the image  I  had  always had  of my father's
timidity,  his fear  of people. But before I had time to surrender myself to
that  image,  Vicente's  eyes flared  with some strange inner luminosity. He
made a comically serious  face at me  and  then spoke  with authority and it
professorial manner.
     "To  answer  your question," he said,  "there is  no survival  value in
heightened  awareness;  otherwise the whole human  race would be there. They
are safe from  that, though, because it's so hard to get  into  it. There is
always, however,
     the remote  possibility that an average man  might  enter  into such  a
state. If he  does,  he ordinarily succeeds in  confusing himself, sometimes
irreparably."
     The  three  of  them  exploded  with  laughter.  "Sorcerers   say  that
heightened awareness is the  portal of intent" don  Juan said. "And they use
it as such. Think about it."
     I was  staring  at each of them in turn. My mouth was  open, and I felt
that if I kept it open I would be able  to understand the riddle eventually.
I closed my eyes and the answer came to me.  I felt it. I did  not think it.
But I could not put it into words, no matter how hard I tried.
     "There, there," don Juan said, "you've gotten another sorcerer's answer
all by yourself, but you still  don't have enough energy  to  flatten it and
turn it into words."
     The sensation I  was  experiencing  was more than  just  that of  being
unable to voice my thoughts; it was like  reliving something I had forgotten
ages ago: not to  know what I felt because I had  not yet  learned to speak,
and therefore lacked the resources to translate my feelings into thoughts.
     "Thinking  and saying exactly  what  you  want to say  requires  untold
amounts of energy," don Juan said and broke into my feelings.
     The force of my reverie had been  so intense it had made me forget what
had started it. I stared dumbfounded at don Juan and confessed I had no idea
what they  or  I  had said  or done  just  a moment before. I remembered the
incident of the leather  rope  and what  don Juan had  told  me  immediately
afterward,  but  I  could not recall  the feeling that  had flooded me  just
moments ago.
     "You're going the wrong way," don Juan said. "You're trying to remember
thoughts  the way you  normally  do,  but  this  is a different situation. A
second  ago  you  had an  overwhelming feeling  that you knew something very
specific.
     Such feelings cannot be recollected by using memory. You have to recall
them by intending them back."
     He turned to Silvio Manuel, who had  stretched out in the armchair, his
legs under  the coffee table. Silvio Manuel looked  fixedly at  me. His eyes
were black, like two pieces of shiny obsidian. Without moving a  muscle,  he
let out a piercing birdlike scream.
     "Intent!!" he yelled. "Intent!! Intent!
     With each scream his voice became more and  more inhuman  and piercing.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt goose bumps on my skin.
My mind, however, instead of focusing on the fright I was experiencing, went
directly to recollecting  the feeling I had had. But before I could savor it
completely, the feeling expanded and burst  into something else. And then  I
understood not only why heightened awareness was the portal of intent, but I
also understood what  intent was. And,  above all,  I understood  that  that
knowledge  could not be turned  into  words. That  knowledge was  there  for
everyone.  It was there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One
could  come into  it by  changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened
awareness was an entrance. But even the entrance could not be explained. One
could only make use of it.
     There  was  still another piece of  knowledge that  came to me that day
without any coaching: that the natural  knowledge of intent was available to
anyone, but the command of it belonged to those who probed it.
     I was terribly tired by this time, and doubtlessly as a result of that,
my  Catholic upbringing came to bear heavily on my reactions. For a moment I
believed that intent was God.
     I said as  much to don Juan,  Vicente and Silvio Manuel. They  laughed.
Vicente, still in his professorial tone, said
     that it  could not  possibly be  God, because  intent  was a force that
could not be described, much less represented.
     "Don't  be  presumptuous," don  Juan said to me sternly.  "Don't try to
speculate on the basis of  your first and only trial. Wait until you command
your knowledge, then decide what is what."
     Remembering the four  moods of stalking exhausted me. The most dramatic
result was a more than  ordinary indifference.  I would not have cared if  I
had dropped dead, nor if don Juan had. I did  not  care whether we stayed at
that ancient lookout post overnight or started back in the pitch-dark.
     Don Juan was very understanding. He guided me by the hand, as if I were
blind,  to  a  massive  rock,  and  helped me  sit  with my  back to  it. He
recommended  that  I  let  natural  sleep  return me  to  a  normal state of
awareness.

     THE DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT

     Seeing The Spirit

     Right after a late lunch, while  we were  still at the table, don  Juan
announced that the two of us were going to spend the night in the sorcerers'
cave and that we had to be on our way. He said that it was imperative that I
sit  there again,  in total darkness,  to allow the rock  formation and  the
sorcerers' intent to move my assemblage point.
     I  started  to get  up from  my  chair, but he stopped me. He said that
there was something he wanted to  explain  to  me  first.  He stretched out,
putting his feet on the  seat of a chair, then leaned  back  into a relaxed,
comfortable position.
     "As  I see you in greater detail," don  Juan  said,  "I notice more and
more how similar you and my benefactor are."
     I felt so threatened that I did not let him continue. I told him that I
could not  imagine what  those similarities were, hut if there were any -  a
possibility I did not consider reassuring - I would appreciate it if he told
me about them, to give me a chance to correct or avoid them.
     Don Juan laughed until tears were rolling down his cheeks.
     "One  of the similarities is that when you act, you act very well,"  he
said, "but when you think, you always trip
     yourself up. My benefactor was like that. He didn't think too well."
     I was just about to defend myself,  to say there was nothing wrong with
my thinking, when I caught a glint of mischievousness in his eyes. I stopped
cold. Don Juan noticed my shift and laughed with a note of surprise. He must
have been anticipating the opposite.
     "What   I  mean,  for  instance,   is   that  you  only  have  problems
understanding the spirit when you think about it," he went on with a chiding
smile.  "But  when  you act,  the  spirit easily reveals itself  to you.  My
benefactor was that way.
     "Before we leave for the cave, I am going to  tell you a story about my
benefactor and the fourth abstract core.
     "Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit's  descent,
any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards."
     Don Juan  deliberately  stopped  to  urge  me, with  a  movement of his
eyebrows, to consider what he was telling me.
     "The fourth abstract  core is the full brunt of  the spirit's descent,"
he went on. "The fourth  abstract core  is  an act of revelation. The spirit
reveals itself to us.  Sorcerers describe  it as  the spirit lying in ambush
and then descending on us, its prey. Sorcerers say that the spirit's descent
is always shrouded.  It happens and yet  it  seems not to  have  happened at
all."
     I became  very  nervous.  Don Juan's  tone of  voice  was giving me the
feeling that he was preparing to spring something on me at any moment.
     He asked me  if  I remembered the moment  the  spirit descended on  me,
sealing my permanent allegiance to the abstract.
     I had no idea what he was talking about.
     "There is a threshold that once  crossed  permits no retreat," he said.
"Ordinarily, from  the  moment  the spirit  knocks,  it  is years  before an
apprentice  reaches that  threshold.  Sometimes,  though, the  threshold  is
reached almost immediately. My benefactor's case is an example."
     Don Juan  said  every  sorcerer should have  a clear memory of crossing
that threshold so he could remind himself of the new state of his perceptual
potential. He explained that one did not have to be an apprentice of sorcery
to reach this threshold, and that the only difference between an average man
and  a  sorcerer, in  such  cases,  is  what  each  emphasizes.  A  sorcerer
emphasizes crossing this threshold and uses the  memory of it as  a point of
reference. An average man does not  cross the threshold and does his best to
forget all about it.
     I  told  him that I  did not agree with his point, because I could  not
accept that there was only one threshold to cross.
     Don Juan looked heavenward  in  dismay and shook his  head  in a joking
gesture of despair. I  proceeded with my argument, not to disagree with him,
but to clarify things in my mind. Yet I quickly lost my impetus. Suddenly  I
had the feeling I was sliding through a tunnel.
     "Sorcerers say  that the fourth  abstract core happens  when the spirit
cuts  our  chains  of  self-reflection,"  he  said. "Cutting  our  chains is
marvelous, but also very undesirible, for nobody wants to be free."
     The sensation  of  sliding through a  tunnel  persisted  for  a .moment
longer, and then  everything became  clear  to me.  And  1  began  to laugh.
Strange insights pent up inside me Were exploding into laughter.
     Don Juan seemed to be reading my mind as if it were a book.
     "What  a  strange  feeling:  to   realize  that  everything  we  think,
everything  we say depends  on the  position  of  the assemblage point,"  he
remarked.
     And that was exactly what I had been thinking and laughing about.
     "I know that at this moment your assemblage point has shifted," he went
on, "and you have understood the secret of our chains. They imprison us, but
by keeping us pinned down  on our comfortable spot of self-reflection,  they
defend us from the onslaughts of the unknown."
     I  was  having  one of those extraordinary  moments in which everything
about the sorcerers' world was crystal .clear. I understood everything.
     "Once our chains are cut," don  Juan continued, "we are no longer bound
by the concerns of the  daily world. We are still in the daily world, but we
don't belong there anymore. In order to belong we must share the concerns of
people, and without chains we can't."
     Don Juan  said that the nagual  Elias  had  explained to him  that what
distinguishes  normal people  is that  we share a  metaphorical  dagger: the
concerns  of  our  self-reflection. With this dagger, we  cut  ourselves and
bleed;  and  the job  of  our  chains of self-reflection  is to give  us the
feeling  that  we  are bleeding  together, that  we  are  sharing  something
wonderful: our humanity. But if  we were to  examine it,  we would  discover
that we  are bleeding alone;  that  we are not sharing anything; that all we
are doing is toying with our manageable, unreal, man-made reflection.
     "Sorcerers are no longer in  the world of daily affairs," don Juan went
on, "because they are no longer prey to their
     self-reflection."
     Don  Juan then began his story about his benefactor and the  descent of
the  spirit.  He said that  the  story  started right after  the  spirit had
knocked on the young actor's door.
     I interrupted don Juan and asked him why he consistently used the terms
"young man" or "young actor" to refer to the nagual Julian.
     "At  the time of this story, he  wasn't the nagual,"  don Juan replied.
"He was a young actor. In my story, I can't just call him Julian, because to
me he was always the nagual Julian. As a sign of deference for his  lifetime
of impeccabitity, we always prefix 'nagual' to a nagual's name."
     Don  Juan proceeded with  his  story. He said that the nagual Elias had
stopped  the  young  actor's  death  by  making  him shift  into  heightened
awareness,  and  following  hours  of struggle,  the  young  actor  regained
consciousness. The nagual Elias did not mention his name, but he  introduced
himself as  a  professional  healer who had  stumbled  onto  the scene of  a
tragedy, where two persons had nearly died.  He pointed  to the young woman,
Talia, stretched out on the ground. The young man was astonished to see  her
lying unconscious next to him. He  remembered seeing her as she ran away. It
startled  him  to  hear the  old  healer  explain  that doubtlessly God  had
punished Talia for her  sins by  striking her with lightning and  making her
lose her mind.
     "But how could there be lightning if  it's not even raining?" the young
actor asked in a barely audible  voice. He was visibly affected when the old
Indian replied that God's ways couldn't be questioned.
     Again I interrupted don Juan. I was curious to  know if the young woman
really had lost her mind. He reminded  me that the nagual Elias delivered  a
shattering blow to her  assemblage point. He said that she  had not lost her
mind, but that as a result of the blow she slipped in and out of  heightened
awareness,  creating  a serious  threat  to  her  health.  After a  gigantic
struggle, however, the nagual Elias  helped her to stabilize  her assemblage
point and she entered permanently into heightened awareness.
     Don Juan commented that women are capable of such a master stroke: they
can permanently maintain a new position of their assemblage point. And Talia
was peerless. As soon as her chains were broken, she immediately  understood
everything and complied with the nagual's designs.
     Don Juan, recounting his story, said that the  nagual  Elias  - who was
not  only a  superb dreamer, but  also a superb stalker -  had seen that the
young  actor  was  spoiled and  conceited,  but only  seemed to be  hard and
calloused. The  nagual knew  that if he brought forth the idea of  God, sin,
and retribution,  the  actor's  religious beliefs  would  make  his  cynical
attitude collapse.
     Upon  hearing about  God's  punishment,  the  actor's facade  began  to
crumble. He  started to express remorse, but the  nagual  cut  him short and
forcefully stressed that when death was so near, feelings of guilt no longer
mattered.
     The young actor listened  attentively, but,  although he felt very ill,
he  did  not believe  that he  was  in danger of dying. He thought  that his
weakness and fainting had been brought on by his loss of blood.
     As if he had  read the young actor's mind, the nagual explained to  him
that  those optimistic  thoughts were  out of  place,  that his hemorrhaging
would have been fatal had it not been for the plug that he, as a healer, had
created.
     "When  I struck your back, I put in a plug to stop the draining of your
life force,"  the nagual said to the skeptical young  actor.  "Without  that
restraint, the unavoidable  process of your  death  would continue.  If  you
don't  believe me, I'll  prove it to you by  removing the  plug with another
blow."
     As he spoke, the  nagual Elias tapped the young actor on his right side
by  his ribcage. In a moment the young  man  was retching and choking. Blood
.poured out  of his  mouth as  he coughed uncontrollably. Another tap on his
back stopped the agonizing pain and retching. But it did not stop his  fear,
and he passed out.
     "I can control your death for the time being," the nagual said when the
young  actor  regained consciousness. "How long I can  control it depends on
you, on how faithfully you acquiesce to everything I tell you to do."
     The nagual said that the first requirements of the young man were total
immobility and silence. If he did not want his plug to  come out, the nagual
added, he had to behave as if he had lost his powers of motion and speech. A
single twitch or a single utterance would be enough to restart his dying.
     The young  actor  was not accustomed to complying  with  suggestions or
demands. He felt a surge of anger.  As he  started to voice his protest, the
burning pain and convulsions started up again.
     "Stay with it, and I  will cure  you," the nagual  said. "Act  like the
weak, rotten imbecile you are, and you will die."
     The actor, a proud young man, was numbed by the insult. Nobody had ever
called him a weak, rotten  imbecile. He wanted  to express his fury, but his
pain was so severe that he could not react to the indignity.
     "If  you want me to  ease your pain, you  must  obey  me  blindly," the
nagual said with frightening coldness. "Signal me with a nod.  But know  now
that the moment  you  change your mind and  act like the shameful  moron you
are, I'll immediately pull the plug and leave you to die."
     With his last bit of  strength the  actor nodded his assent. The nagual
tapped him on  his  back  and his pain vanished. But  along with the searing
pain, something else vanished: the fog in his mind. And then the young actor
knew  everything  without  understanding  anything.  The  nagual  introduced
himself again.  He  told  him that his name  was  Elias, and that he was the
nagual. And the actor knew what it all meant.
     The nagual Elias then shifted his attention to the semiconscious Talfa.
He put his mouth to  her left ear and whispered commands to her in  order to
make her assemblage  point stop its erratic shifting. He soothed her fear by
telling her, in whispers, stories of sorcerers who had gone through the same
thing she was experiencing. When  she was fairly calm, he introduced himself
as the nagual Elias, a  sorcerer; and then he attempted  with  her  the most
difficult thing in sorcery: moving the assemblage point beyond the sphere of
the world we know.
     Don Juan remarked that seasoned sorcerers are capable  of moving beyond
the world we  know, but that inexperienced persons are not. The nagual Elias
always  maintained  that  ordinarily he would not have dreamed of attempting
such  a  feat, but  on that day something other than  his knowledge  or  his
volition was making him act. Yet the maneuver worked. Talia moved beyond the
world we know and came safely back.
     Then the  nagual Elias  had another insight. He  sat  between  the  two
people  stretched  out on the ground  - the actor was naked, covered only by
the nagual Elfas's riding coat -  and reviewed their situation. He told them
they had both, by the  force of circumstances, fallen into a trap set by the
spirit itself.  He, the nagual, was the active part of that trap, because by
encountering them under the conditions he had, he  had been forced to become
their temporary protector and to engage his knowledge of sorcery in order to
help them.  As their temporary protector it was his  duty  to warn them that
they were about  to reach a unique threshold; and that  it  was  up to them,
both individually and together,  to attain that threshold by entering a mood
of abandon but not recklessness; a mood of caring but not indulgence. He did
not  want  to  say more for fear  of  confusing  them or  influencing  their
decision. He felt that if  they were to  cross that threshold, it  had to be
with minimal help from him.
     The  nagual then left them alone in that isolated spot  and went to the
city to  arrange for medicinal herbs,  mats, and  blankets  to be brought to
them.  His idea  was  that  in solitude  they would attain  and  cross  that
threshold.
     For a  long time the two  young people lay next to each other, immersed
in  their own  thoughts. The fact that their assemblage points  had  shifted
meant that they could  think  in  greater depth than ordinarily, but it also
meant that they worried, pondered, and were afraid in equally greater depth.
     Since Talfa could talk and was a bit stronger, she broke their silence;
she  asked the young  actor if he was afraid. He  nodded affirmatively.  She
felt a great compassion for him  and took off a shawl she was wearing to put
over his shoulders, and she held his hand.
     The young man  did not dare voice -what he felt. His fear that his pain
would recur if he spoke -was too great and too vivid. He wanted to apologize
to her; to tell her that his  only  regret  was having hurt her, and that it
did not matter that he was going to die - for he knew with certainty that he
was not going to survive the day.
     Talia's thoughts were on the same subject. She said that  she  too  had
only one  regret: that she had fought him hard enough to bring on his death.
She was very  peaceful now,  a feeling which, agitated as she always was and
driven by  her great strength, was unfamiliar to her.  She told him that her
death was very near, too, and that she was glad it all would end that day.
     The young actor, hearing his own thoughts being spoken by Talia, felt a
chill. A surge of energy came to him then and made him sit up. He was not in
pain, nor was he coughing. He took in great gulps  of air, something he  had
no  memory of having done before. He took the girl's hand and they  began to
talk without vocalizing.
     Don Juan said  it was at that instant that the spirit came to them. And
they saw. They  were deeply Catholic, and  what they saw  was  a  vision  of
heaven,  where everything was alive, bathed in light. They  saw  a world  of
miraculous sights.
     When the nagual returned, they  were exhausted,  although not  injured.
Talia  was unconscious, but the young man  had managed to remain aware  by a
supreme effort of self-control. He insisted  on whispering  something in the
nagual's ear.
     "We saw heaven," he whispered, tears rolling down his cheeks.
     "You  saw more than that," the  nagual  Elfas  retorted. "You  saw  the
spirit."
     Don  Juan said that  since  the  spirit's  descent is always  shrouded,
naturally, Talia and the young actor could not hold onto  their vision. They
soon  forgot  it,  as anyone would.  The uniqueness of their  experience was
that, without any training and without  being  aware of it, they had dreamed
together and had seen the spirit. For them  to  have achieved this with such
ease was quite out of the ordinary.
     "Those two were really the most remarkable beings I have ever met," don
Juan added.
     I, naturally, wanted  to know  more about them. But  don Juan would not
indulge me. He said that this was all there was about his benefactor and the
fourth abstract core.
     He  seemed to remember  something he  was  not telling  me  and laughed
uproariously. Then he patted  me on the  back and told me it was time to set
out for the cave.
     When we got  to the rock  ledge it  was almost dark. Don Juan  sat down
hurriedly,  in  the same position as the first  time. He  was  to  my right,
touching  me  with his shoulder. He immediately seemed to enter into a  deep
state of  relaxation, which pulled  me into  total immobility and silence. I
could not  even  hear his  breathing. I closed my eyes, and he  nudged me to
warn me to keep them open.
     By the time it became completely dark, an immense fatigue had begun to"
make my eyes sore and itchy. Finally I gave up  my resistance and was pulled
into the  deepest,  blackest sleep I have  ever had. Yet  I was  not totally
asleep.  I  could  feel the  thick blackness  around me. I  had  an entirely
physical  sensation of wading through  blackness.  Then  it  suddenly became
reddish, then orange, then glaring white, like a terribly strong neon light.
Gradually I  focused my vision until I saw I  was still sitting in  the same
position with don Juan - but no longer in the cave. We were on a mountaintop
looking down  over  exquisite flatlands with mountains in the distance. This
beautiful prairie  was bathed  in a glow that, like rays of light,  emanated
from the  land itself.  Wherever I  looked, I  saw familiar features: rocks,
hills,  rivers, forests, canyons,  enhanced  and transformed by their  inner
vibration, their inner glow. This glow that was so  pleasing to my eyes also
tingled out of my very being.
     "Your assemblage point has moved," don Juan seemed to say to me.
     The words had no  sound; nevertheless I knew what he  had just said  to
me. My rational reaction was to try to explain to myself that I had no doubt
heard him  as I  would  have if  he had been talking in  a vacuum,  probably
because my ears had been temporarily affected by what was transpiring.
     "Your ears are fine. We are in a  different realm  of  awareness,"  don
Juan again seemed to say to me.
     I could not speak. I felt the lethargy of deep sleep preventing me from
saying a word, yet I was as alert as I could be.
     "What's happening?" I thought.
     "The cave made your assemblage  point move,"  don  Juan  thought, and I
heard his thoughts as if they were my own words, voiced to myself.
     I  sensed a command  that  was not  expressed  in  thoughts.  Something
ordered me to look again at the prairie.
     As I stared at the wondrous sight, filaments of light began  to radiate
from  everything on that  prairie. At first it was like  the explosion of an
infinite number  of  short  fibers, then the  fibers  became long threadlike
strands of  luminosity  bundled together into beams of vibrating  light that
reached infinity. There was really no way for me to make sense of what I was
seeing,  or to  describe it, except  as  filaments of  vibrating  light. The
filaments  were  not  intermingled  or entwined. Although  they  sprang, and
continued to spring,  in every direction, each one was separate, and yet all
of them were inextricably bundled together.
     "You are seeing  the  Eagle's emanations and the  force that keeps them
apart and bundles them together," don Juan thought.
     The instant  I  caught his  thought  the filaments of  light  seemed to
consume  all my  energy. Fatigue overwhelmed  me.  It erased  my vision  and
plunged me into darkness.
     When I  became aware of  myself again, there  was something so familiar
around me, although I could  not tell what it was, that I believed myself to
be  back in a  normal state of awareness. Don Juan was asleep beside me, his
shoulder against mine.
     Then I realized that the darkness around us was so intense that I could
not even see my hands. I speculated that fog must have covered the ledge and
filled the cave. Or perhaps it was the wispy low clouds that descended every
rainy night from the  higher mountains like a silent avalanche. Yet in spite
of the total blackness,  somehow I  saw that don Juan  had  opened  his eyes
immediately after I  became aware, although he did not look at me. Instantly
I  realized that seeing him was not  a consequence of light on my retina. It
was, rather, a bodily sense.
     I became so engrossed in observing don Juan  without my eyes that I was
not paying attention to  what he was telling  me. Finally he stopped talking
and turned his face to me as if to look me in the eye.
     He coughed a couple of times to clear his throat and started to talk in
a very low voice. He said that his benefactor used to come to the cave quite
often,  both with him  and with  his  other disciples,  but  more  often  by
himself. In that cave his benefactor saw the same prairie we had  just seen,
a  vision  that  gave him the idea of  describing the spirit  as the flow of
things.
     Don  Juan repeated that his benefactor  was not  a good thinker. Had he
been,  he  would  have realized  in an  instant that what  he  had  seen and
described as  the flow  of  things  was  intent,  the  force  that permeates
everything. Don Juan added that if  his benefactor ever became aware  of the
nature of his seeing he didn't reveal it. And he, himself, had the idea that
his  benefactor never knew it. Instead, his benefactor  believed that he had
seen the flow of things,  which was the absolute truth, but  not the  way he
meant it.
     Don Juan was so emphatic about this  that I wanted  to ask him what the
difference was, but I could not speak. My throat seemed frozen. We sat there
in  complete silence and immobility  for hours. Yet I did not experience any
discomfort. My  muscles did not get tired, my legs did not  fall asleep,  my
back did not ache.
     When he began to talk again, I  did not even notice the transition, and
I readily  abandoned myself to listening  to  his  voice. It was a  melodic,
rhythmical sound that emerged from the total blackness that surrounded me.
     He said  that  at  that very moment I was not in  my  normal  state  of
awareness nor was I in heightened awareness. I was suspended  in a  lull, in
the blackness of  nonperception. My  assemblage point  had  moved away  from
perceiving the daily world, but it had not moved enough to reach and light a
totally new bundle of energy fields. Properly speaking, I was caught between
two perceptual possibilities. This in-between state, this lull of perception
had been reached through the influence of the cave, which was itself  guided
by the intent of the sorcerers who carved it.
     Don Juan asked me to  pay close attention to what he was  going to  say
next. He  said that  thousands of  years ago, by  means of seeing, sorcerers
became aware that the earth was sentient and that its awareness could affect
the awareness  of  humans. They  tried  to  find a  way  to  use the earth's
influence  on human awareness  and  they discovered that certain caves  were
most  effective.  Don Juan said  that the search  for  caves  became  nearly
full-time work for those sorcerers, and  that through  their endeavors  they
were  able  to   discover  a   variety  of  uses  for   a  variety  of  cave
configurations. He added that out of all that work the only result pertinent
to us was this particular cave and its capacity to move the assemblage point
until it reached a lull of perception.
     As  don Juan  spoke,  I had the unsettling sensation that something was
clearing in my mind. Something was funneling my awareness into a long narrow
channel.  All  the  superfluous half-thoughts  and  feelings  of  my  normal
awareness were being squeezed out.
     Don Juan was thoroughly aware of what was happening to me.  I heard his
soft chuckle of satisfaction. He said that now we could talk more easily and
our conversation would have more depth.
     I remembered  at that moment  scores of things  he  had explained to me
before. For instance, I knew that I was
     dreaming. I was actually sound asleep yet I was totally aware of myself
through my second attention  - the counterpart of my normal attentiveness. I
was certain I  was asleep  because of  a  bodily sensation  plus  a rational
deduction based on statements that don Juan had made in the past. I had just
seen  the Eagle's  emanations, and don Juan  had said that it was impossible
for sorcerers to have a sustained view of the Eagle's  emanations in any way
except in dreaming, therefore I had to be dreaming.
     Don Juan had explained that  the universe is  made up  of energy fields
which  defy  description or  scrutiny.  He  had  said  that  they  resembled
filaments of ordinary light, except  that light is lifeless compared to  the
Eagle's emanations, which exude awareness.  I  had  never, until this night,
been  able to see them in a sustained manner, and indeed  they were made out
of  a  light that was alive. Don Juan  had  maintained in the  past that  my
knowledge and control of intent were not adequate to withstand the impact of
that sight. He had  explained  that normal  perception  occurs when  intent,
which is pure  energy,  lights up a portion of the luminous filaments inside
our cocoon,  and at  the same  time brightens  a long extension  of the same
luminous filaments extending into infinity outside our cocoon. Extraordinary
perception, seeing, occurs when by the force of intent, a different  cluster
of  energy fields energizes  and lights up. He had said that when a  crucial
number of energy fields are lit up inside the luminous cocoon, a sorcerer is
able to see the energy fields themselves.
     On another occasion don Juan had recounted the rational thinking of the
early sorcerers.  He  told me that, through their seeing, they realized that
awareness took place when the  energy fields inside our luminous cocoon were
aligned  with  the  same energy fields outside. And  they believed they  had
discovered alignment as the source of awareness.
     Upon close examination, however, it  became evident that  what they had
called alignment  of the  Eagle's emanations did  not entirely explain  what
they  were seeing. They had noticed  that only a very small  portion of  the
total number of luminous filaments inside the cocoon was energized while the
rest remained unaltered. Seeing these few filaments energized had  created a
false discovery. The filaments  did  not  need to  be aligned to  be lit up,
because  the ones inside our cocoon were the same as those outside. Whatever
energized them was definitely an independent force. They felt they could not
continue to call it  awareness, as they had, because awareness was the  glow
of the energy fields  being lit up. So  the force that lit up the fields was
named will.
     Don  Juan  had   said  that   when   their  seeing  became  still  more
sophisticated and effective, they realized that will was the force that kept
the  Eagle's  emanations separated  and  was not only  responsible  for  our
awareness, but also for everything in the universe. They saw that this force
had total consciousness and that it  sprang from  the  very fields of energy
that made the universe. They decided then that intent was a more appropriate
name  for  it  than  will.  In  the  long  run,  however,  die  name  proved
disadvantageous, because  it does  not describe  its overwhelming importance
nor the living connection it has with everything in the universe.
     Don Juan had asserted that our great collective  flaw  is  that we live
our  lives completely disregarding  that  connection.  The  busyness of  our
lives,  our relentless  interests, concerns,  hopes, frustrations, and fears
take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to
everything else.
     Don Juan had stated his  belief that the Christian  idea of  being cast
out from the Garden of Eden sounded to him  like an allegory  for losing our
silent knowledge, our knowledge of intent. Sorcery,  then, was  a going back
to the beginning, a return to paradise.
     We stayed seated in the cave  in total silence, perhaps for  hours,  or
perhaps it was only a few instants. Suddenly don Juan began to talk, and the
unexpected  sound of his voice  jarred me.  I did not catch what he said.  I
cleared  my  throat to  ask  him to repeat  what he  had said, and that  act
brought me completely out of my reflectiveness. I  quickly realized that the
darkness around me  was no longer impenetrable. I could speak now. I  felt I
was back in my normal state of awareness.
     In  a  calm voice don  Juan told me that for the very first time in  my
life  I  had seen the  spirit,  the force  that sustains  the  universe.  He
emphasized that intent is not something  one might use or command or move in
any way  - nevertheless, one  could use it, command it, or  move  it as  one
desires. This contradiction, he said, is the essence of  sorcery. To fail to
understand it  had brought  generations of sorcerers  unimaginable pain  and
sorrow.  Modern-day naguals, in  an  effort to  avoid paying this exorbitant
price in pain, had developed a code of behavior called the warrior's way, or
the impeccable  action, which prepared sorcerers by enhancing their sobriety
and thoughtfulness.
     Don Juan explained that at one  time in the remote past, sorcerers were
deeply  interested  in the general  connecting  link that  intent  has  with
everything.  And  by focusing their  second  attention  on  that  link, they
acquired not only direct knowledge but also the  ability  to manipulate that
knowledge and perform  astounding deeds. They did not  acquire, however, the
soundness of mind needed to manage all that power.
     So  in  a  judicious  mood, sorcerers  decided  to  focus their  second
attention  solely on the connecting  link of  creatures who  have awareness.
This included the entire range  of  existing organic beings  as well  as the
entire  range of what sorcerers call inorganic beings, or allies, which they
described as entities with awareness, but no  life  as we  understand  life.
This solution  was not successful either, because it,  too,  failed to bring
them wisdom.
     In their  next reduction, sorcerers focused their attention exclusively
on the link  that connects human beings with intent. The end result was very
much as before.
     Then,  sorcerers sought  a  final reduction.  Each  sorcerer  would  be
concerned solely  with his  individual  connection. But this  proved  to  be
equally ineffective.
     Don  Juan said that  although there were  remarkable differences  among
those four  areas of interest,  one was as corrupting as  another. So in the
end  sorcerers concerned themselves exclusively with the capacity that their
individual  connecting  link with intent had to set them free  to  light the
fire from within.
     He asserted that all modern-day sorcerers have  to struggle fiercely to
gain soundness of mind. A nagual  has to struggle especially hard because he
has more strength, a greater  command over the energy fields that  determine
perception, and more training  in and  familiarity  with the  intricacies of
silent knowledge, which is nothing but direct contact with intent.
     Examined in this  way,  sorcery becomes  an attempt  to reestablish our
knowledge of intent and regain use of it without  succumbing to it. And  the
abstract cores of the sorcery stories  are shades of realization, degrees of
our being aware of intent.
     I understood don Juan's explanation with  perfect clarity. But the more
I understood and the clearer  his statements became, the greater my sense of
loss and  despondency. At one  moment I  sincerely considered ending my life
right there. I felt I  was damned.  Nearly  in tears,  I told don Juan  that
there was no point in his continuing  his explanation, for I knew that I was
about to lose my clarity of  mind, and  that when I  reverted  to my  normal
state of awareness I would have no memory of having seen or  heard anything.
My mundane  consciousness would impose  its lifelong habit of repetition and
the  reasonable predictability of its  logic. That was why I  felt damned. I
told him that I resented my fate.
     Don  Juan responded that  even in  heightened  awareness I  thrived  on
repetition, and that periodically I would insist on boring him by describing
my attacks of feeling worthless. He said that if I had to go under it should
be  fighting, not apologizing or  feeling sorry  for myself, and that it did
not  matter what our specific fate was as long as we  faced it with ultimate
abandon.
     His words made  me  feel blissfully happy. I  repeated  over and  over,
tears  streaming down  my  cheeks,  that I  agreed with  him. There was such
profound happiness in me I suspected my nerves were  getting out  of hand. I
called upon all my forces to stop this and I felt the sobering  effect of my
mental brakes. But as this happened, my clarity  of mind began to diffuse. I
silently fought  - trying to be both less  sober and less nervous. Don  Juan
did not make a sound and left me alone.
     By the time I had reestablished  my balance,  it  was almost  dawn. Don
Juan stood, stretched his arms above his head and tensed his muscles, making
his joints crack.  He  helped  me up and commented that  I had spent  a most
enlightening  night: I had experienced what the spirit was and had been able
to summon hidden strength to  accomplish something,  which  on  the  surface
amounted to calming  my nervousness, but at a deeper level it  had  actually
been  a  very  successful, volitional  movement of my  assemblage  point. He
signaled then that it was time to start on our way back.

     THE SOMERSAULT OF THOUGHT

     We  walked into his  house  around seven in  the  morning, in time  for
breakfast. I was famished but not tired. We had  left the cave to climb down
to the valley at dawn. Don Juan, instead of following the most direct route,
made a long detour that took us along the river. He explained that we had to
collect our wits before we got home.
     I answered it  was very kind of him to  say "our wits" when  I  was the
only one whose wits were disordered.  But he replied that he was  acting not
out  of kindness but  out of  warrior's training. A warrior, he said, was on
permanent  guard  against the roughness of human  behavior.  A  warrior  was
magical  and ruthless, a  maverick  with the most refined taste and manners,
whose wordly task was to sharpen, yet disguise, his cutting edges so that no
one would be able to suspect his ruthlessness.
     After breakfast I thought it  would be wise to get some sleep, but  don
Juan contended  I had  no time to waste. He said  that all too soon I  would
lose the  little clarity I still had, and if I went to sleep I would lose it
all.
     "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is hardly any way to
talk  about intent" he said quickly  as he scrutinized me from head to  toe.
"But  making this  statement  doesn't  mean  anything. It is  the reason why
sorcerers rely  instead  on  the  sorcery  stories.  And  their hope is that
someday the abstract cores of the stories will make sense to the listener."
     I understood what he was saying, but I still could not conceive what an
abstract  core  was or what it was supposed to mean to me. I tried to  think
about it. Thoughts barraged me. Images passed rapidly through my mind giving
me no time to  think about them. I  could not  slow them down enough even to
recognize them. Finally  anger overpowered  me and I slammed my fist on  the
table.
     Don Juan shook from head to toe, choking with laughter.
     "Do what  you did  last  night,"  he urged  me, winking. "Slow yourself
down."
     My frustration made me very  aggressive.  I  immediately put forth some
senseless arguments; then I became aware of  my error and  apologized for my
lack of restraint.
     "Don't  apologize," he said. "I should tell you  that the understanding
you're after is impossible  at this time. The abstract  cores of the sorcery
stories will say nothing to you now. Later - years later, I mean  - they may
make perfect sense to you."
     I begged don Juan not to leave me in the dark, to discuss  the abstract
cores.  It was not at all clear  to  me what he wanted me to do with them. I
assured him that  my present  state  of heightened  awareness could be  very
helpful to me in allowing  me  to  understand his discussion. I urged him to
hurry, for I could not guarantee how long this  state would last. I told him
that  soon I would return to my normal state and would become a bigger idiot
than I was at that moment. I said it half in jest. His laughter told me that
he had taken it  as such, but I  was deeply  affected  by  my  own  words. A
tremendous sense of melancholy overtook me.
     Don  Juan gently took my arm, pulled me to a comfortable armchair, then
sat down facing me. He  gazed fixedly into my eyes, and  for a moment I  was
incapable of breaking the force of his stare.
     "Sorcerers constantly stalk themselves," he said in a reassuring voice,
as if trying to calm me with the sound of his voice.
     I wanted to say that my nervousness had passed and that it had probably
been caused by my lack of sleep, but he did not allow me to say anything.
     He assured me  that he  had already taught me everything  there was  to
know about stalking, but I had not yet retrieved my knowledge from the depth
of  heightened awareness,  where I had  it  stored.  I told  him I  had  the
annoying sensation  of being  bottled up. I felt  there was something locked
inside me, something that made me slam doors and kick tables, something that
frustrated me and made me irascible.
     "That  sensation  of  being  bottled up is  experienced  by every human
being," he said.  "It is a reminder of  our existing connection with intent.
For sorcerers  this sensation is even  more  acute,  precisely because their
goal is to sensitize their  connecting  link until they can make it function
at will.
     "When  the  pressure of their connecting link  is too great,  sorcerers
relieve it by stalking themselves."
     "I still  don't think I understand  what you  mean by stalking" I said.
"But at a certain level I think I know exactly what you mean."
     "I'll try to help you  clarify what you know, then," he said. "Stalking
is a procedure, a very simple one. Stalking is special behavior that follows
certain principles. It is secretive, furtive, deceptive behavior designed to
deliver  a jolt. And,  when you stalk yourself you jolt yourself, using your
own behavior in a ruthless, cunning way."
     He explained that when  a sorcerer's  awareness became bogged down with
the weight of his perceptual  input, which was what was happening to me, the
best, or even perhaps the only,  remedy  was  to  use  the idea  of death to
deliver that stalking jolt.
     "The idea of death therefore is of monumental importance in the life of
a sorcerer," don Juan continued. "I have shown you innumerable things  about
death to convince you that  the  knowledge of  our impending and unavoidable
end is what  gives us sobriety. Our most  costly  mistake as average  men is
indulging in a  sense  of immortality. It is as though we believe that if we
don't think about death we can protect ourselves from it."
     "You must agree, don Juan, not thinking  about death certainly protects
us from worrying about it."
     "Yes, it serves that purpose," he conceded.  "But that  purpose  is  an
unworthy  one for average men  and a travesty for sorcerers. Without a clear
view of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty. Sorcerers struggle
to gain  this crucial insight in order to help  them realize at the  deepest
possible  level that they  have  no assurance  whatsoever  their  lives will
continue beyond the moment. That realization gives sorcerers  the courage to
be  patient and yet  take action,  courage to be acquiescent  without  being
stupid."
     Don Juan fixed his gaze on me. He smiled and shook his head.
     "Yes," he went on. "The idea of death is  the only thing  that can give
sorcerers courage.  Strange, isn't it? It  gives sorcerers the courage to be
cunning without being  conceited, and above all  it gives them courage to be
ruthless without being self-important."
     He smiled again and nudged me. I told him I was absolutely terrified by
the idea of my death, that I  thought  about it constantly, but it certainly
didn't give me courage or spur me to take action. It only made me cynical or
caused me to lapse into moods of profound melancholy.
     "Your problem is  very simple," he said. "You become easily obsessed. I
have been telling you that sorcerers  stalk themselves in order to break the
power of their obsessions.  There  are many ways of stalking oneself. If you
don't want to use the idea of your death, use the poems you read me to stalk
yourself."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "I have told you that  there are many  reasons I like  poems," he said.
"What I do is stalk myself with them.  I deliver a jolt to myself with them.
I  listen, and as you read, I shut off my internal dialogue and let my inner
silence  gain momentum. Then  the combination of  the  poem  and the silence
delivers the jolt."
     He explained  that poets unconsciously  long for  the sorcerers' world.
Because they are not sorcerers on the path of knowledge, longing is all they
have.
     "Let us see if  you can feel what I'm talking about,"  he said, handing
me a book of poems by Jose Gorostiza.
     I opened it at the bookmark and he pointed to the poem he liked.
     . . . this incessant stubborn dying,
     this living death,
     that slays you, oh God,
     in your rigorous handiwork,
     in the roses, in the stones,
     in the indomitable stars
     and in the flesh that burns out,
     like a bonfire lit by a song,
     a dream,
     a hue that hits the eye.
     . . . and you, yourself,
     perhaps have died eternities of ages out there,
     without us knowing about it,
     we dregs, crumbs, ashes of you;
     you that still are present,
     like a star faked by its very light,
     an empty light without star
     that reaches us,
     biding
     its infinite catastrophe.
     "As I  hear the words,"  don Juan said when I had  finished reading, "I
feel that that man is seeing the essence of things and I can see with him. I
don't care what the poem is about. I care only  about the feeling the poet's
longing brings me. I borrow his  longing, and with it I  borrow the  beauty.
And  marvel at  the  fact  that he, like a  true warrior, lavishes it on the
recipients, the  beholders,  retaining for himself  only  his  longing. This
jolt, this shock of beauty, is stalking."
     I was very moved. Don Juan's explanation had touched a strange chord in
me.
     "Would you say, don Juan, that death is the only real enemy we have?" I
asked him a moment later.
     "No,"  he  said with conviction. "Death  is  not an enemy,  although it
appears to be. Death is not our destroyer, although we think it is."
     "What is it, then, if not our destroyer?" I asked.
     "Sorcerers say death is the only  worthy opponent we have," he replied.
"Death is our challenger. We are born to take that challenge, average men or
sorcerers. Sorcerers know about it; average men do not."
     "I personally would say, don Juan, life, not death, is the challenge."
     "Life is the process by  means of which death challenges us,"  he said.
"Death  is the  active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are
only two contenders at any time: oneself and death."
     "I would think, don Juan, that we  human beings are the challengers," I
said.
     "Not at all," he retorted.  "We are passive. Think about h. If we move,
it's only  when we  feel the pressure of death.  Death sets the pace for our
actions and feelings  and pushes us relentlessly until it breaks us and wins
the bout, or else we rise above all possibilities and defeat death.
     "Sorcerers defeat death and death  acknowledges  the  defeat by letting
the sorcerers go free, never to be challenged
     again."
     "Does that mean that sorcerers become immortal?"
     "No. It doesn't mean that," he replied. "Death stops challenging  them,
that's all."
     "But what does that mean, don Juan?" I asked.
     "It  means thought has taken a  somersault into the inconceivable,"  he
said.
     "What  is a  somersault  of thought  into the  inconceivable?" I asked,
trying not to sound belligerent.  "The  problem you and I have is that we do
not share the same meanings."
     "You're not being truthful," don Juan interrupted. "You understand what
I mean. For you to demand a rational explanation of 'a somersault of thought
into the inconceivable' is a travesty. You know exactly what it is."
     "No, I don't," I said.
     And then  I realized that I  did,  or rather,  that I intuited  what it
meant.  There was  some part of me that  could transcend my  rationality and
understand  and  explain,  beyond the  level  of  metaphor,  a somersault of
thought  into  the  inconceivable. The  trouble was  that part of me was not
strong enough to surface at will.
     I said as much to don Juan, who laughed and commented that my awareness
was like a yo-yo. Sometimes it rose to a high spot and my command  was keen,
while at others it descended  and I became a rational moron. But most of the
time it hovered at an unworthy median where I was neither fish nor fowl.
     "A somersault of thought into the inconceivable," he explained with  an
air of resignation, "is the  descent of the spirit; the act of  breaking our
perceptual barriers. It is the moment in  which man's perception reaches its
limits.  Sorcerers practice the art  of  sending scouts, advance runners, to
probe  our perceptual limits. This is another reason I  like  poems.  I take
them as advance runners. But,  as I've said to you  before, poets don't know
as exactly as sorcerers what those advance runners can accomplish."
     In the early evening,  don Juan said that we had many things to discuss
and asked  me if I wanted  to go  for a walk. I was  in  a peculiar state of
mind.  Earlier I  had noticed  a strange aloofness  in myself that came  and
went. At first  I thought it was physical fatigue clouding my thoughts.  But
my  thoughts  were crystal  clear.  So  I became convinced  that my  strange
detachment was a product of my shift to heightened awareness.
     We left the house and strolled around the town's plaza. I quickly asked
don  Juan about my aloofness  before he had  a  chance to  begin on anything
else. He explained it as a shift of energy. He said that  as the energy that
was ordinarily  used to maintain the fixed position of  the assemblage point
became  liberated,  it  focused  automatically  on that  connecting link. He
assured  me  that  there were no techniques or  maneuvers  for a sorcerer to
learn beforehand to move energy from one place to the other. Rather it was a
matter of  an  instantaneous shift  taking place  once  a certain  level  of
proficiency had been attained.
     I asked him  what the level of proficiency was. Pure  understanding, he
replied. In order to attain that instantaneous shift of energy, one needed a
clear connection with intent, and to  get a clear connection one needed only
to intend it through pure understanding.
     Naturally I wanted him to  explain pure  understanding. He  laughed and
sat down on a bench.
     "I'm going to tell you something fundamental about  sorcerers and their
acts of sorcery," he  went on.  "Something about  the  somersault  of  their
thought into the inconceivable."
     He said  that some sorcerers  were storytellers. Storytelling for  them
was not  only  the advance  runner that probed  their perceptual  limits but
their  path to perfection,  to power,  to the spirit. He  was  quiet  for  a
moment, obviously searching for an appropriate example.  Then he reminded me
that the  Yaqui Indians had a collection  of  historical  events they called
"the memorable dates." I knew that the memorable dates were oral accounts of
their history as a nation  when they waged war against the invaders of their
homeland:  the  Spaniards  first,  the  Mexicans  later.  Don Juan,  a Yaqui
himself, stated emphatically that the memorable dates were accounts of their
defeats and disintegration.
     "So, what would you  say," he asked me,  "since you are a learned  man,
about a sorcerer storyteller's taking an  account from the memorable dates -
let's say,  for example, the story of Calixto Muni - and changing the ending
so that instead  of describing  how Calixto Muni was drawn and quartered  by
the  Spanish  executioners,